MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Silverlens Galleries is set to show two online exhibitions for August: Gary-Ross Pastrana’s ‘Things That Came To Light’ and Chati Coronel’s ‘Celestial Data for Daydreaming.’
Things That Came to Light, a new solo exhibition by Gary-Ross Pastrana
words by Cocoy Lumbao
Almost two decades ago in 2003, Gary-Ross Pastrana held a solo exhibition of works done entirely in collage at an independent art space in Quezon City. These were small works on paper, which steadily accumulated since his time as an art student. Most of them were part of his own personal regimen and process and were for his own use and amusement. It was mainly through a string of fortuitous events during that year that led him to finally decide to show them. And since then, Pastrana has shown his collages in more than twenty different shows, both here and overseas, which include solo exhibitions that regularly appear in between projects he’s more known for.
Moving forward to this year, marked by a global pandemic and localized lockdowns, Pastrana has found himself working in another art space—this time, in isolation, and in a studio at Calle Wright, Malate, while the rest of the world’s art programs and exhibitions have seemingly come to a pause. This compelled him to confront more intensively this material left at his disposal— his usual respite from more conceptual work—his paper cuttings, his collages. They became for him, during confinement, the moment’s medium. And it was in this moment, where the proclivity for making collage also required careful introspection and consideration.
An unwavering, yet intermittent operation of such enterprise certainly demands the artist’s attention and understanding. And this fruition—of almost twenty years of collage-making—becomes an occasion to confront certain questions about certain things, such as its viability, its longevity, and its final impetus.
Witnessing an artist’s journey through a specific aberration in form, such as Gary-Ross Pastrana’s own excursions with collage, gives us incredible insight into the nuances in sustaining and collapsing artistic endeavors, and provides a great retrospective on how these pieces have eventually come together to define the artist’s vision.
View Gary-Ross Pastrana’s exhibition here.
Chati Coronel’s Celestial Data for Daydreaming: An Allegiance to the Universal through the Transient
words by Marga Ortigas
In Celestial Data for Daydreaming, Chati Coronel engages her curiosity and passion for cosmology to explore the ephemeral and the eternal. Each piece is titled after one of the seven classical planets of ancient Greece. While she worked on this series, she listened to a playlist that moved her to ponder the skies and our place in the world. Coronel is known for her distinct methodology, which sees one layer of paint instinctively overlaid by another. A distinct marriage of structure and intuition. Coronel never knows how a canvas will turn out until it is done. And it is only “done” – she says – when it is no longer with her. The process of its creation is itself a part of the work. So much goes into Coronel’s art beyond what is visible on the surface. The books she’s read. The things she’s seen, and what she’s felt. The kind of day she’s had. The same things that a viewer brings when they gaze at her work. This exchange underpins her canvases’ fundamental missive of connectivity – that what unites us is ultimately greater than our differences.
View Chati Coronel’s exhibition here.
Things That Came to Light and Celestial Data for Daydreaming will be on view until 28 August 2021. While Silverlens’ physical space is open, gallery visits are strictly by appointment only. Schedule a visit through https://bit.ly/Visit-Silverlens. For more information, please contact info@silverlensgalleries.com or through +63 917 587 4011.
About the artists
Gary-Ross Pastrana
Gary-Ross Pastrana’s (b. 1978, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Manila, Philippines) art has been one of the most persistent in terms of combining concepts with objects. His conceptual pieces, although loaded with poetic intensity, remain unobtrusively subtle and even almost quaint in their appearance. Coiled photographs, woven tales from found pictures in the internet, sawed off parts of a boat shipped to another country, his shirt tied into a pole to commensurate a flag, these are the slightest of turns Gary-Ross has his objects make to create a new text within. Pastrana received his Bachelor’s degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines, where he was awarded the Dominador Castañeda Award for Best Thesis. He has gained considerable experience and exposure within the region, with residencies in Bandung, Kyoto, Bangkok and Singapore. In 2006, Pastrana received the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Award. Since then, he has shown at the Singapore Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of the Philippines, the Jorge B. Vargas Museum and was part of the 2019 The Art Encounters Biennial in Romania, 2019 Singapore Biennale, 2012 New Museum Triennale in New York, 2010 Aichi Triennale, and 2008 Busan Biennale. In 2004, he co-founded Future Prospects art space. In addition to his artistic career, Pastrana curates and organizes exhibitions in Manila and abroad.
Exhibitions include Erstwhile Maps, CASE Space Revolution, Bangkok, Thailand (2020); Every Step in the Right Direction, Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2019); The Art Encounters Biennial, Romania (2019); An Opera for Animals, Para Site, Hong Kong (2019), Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2019); Utopia Hasn’t Failed Me Yet, Silverlens, Manila (2018, solo); The Extra, Extra Ordinary, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2018); The Other Face of the Moon, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju (2017); Clock, Map, Knife, Mirror, ROH Projects, Jakarta, (2016, solo); Summa, Vargas Museum, Manila (2014, solo).
Chati Coronel
Chati Coronel (b. 1970, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Toronto, Canada) has been consistently evolving her painting practice for twenty-eight years and in that time, she has developed a singular artistic voice. Her distinct painting methodology, which she refers to as ‘Figurative Spatialism’ is a process by which negative space is painted over completed layers of text and abstract gestures until a silhouette is enclosed. This leaves her paintings’ subjects, often human figures empty to expose the abstract layers below. By effectively omitting the usual visual cues that point to race, age, or personality, Coronel chooses instead to give her human forms an inner world, a human universality. Coronel is represented by Silverlens Galleries and has exhibited her work in Manila, Los Angeles, Florence, Singapore, and most recently, Art Basel Hong Kong.
About the writers
Cocoy Lumbao
Cocoy Lumbao is an artist and writer based in Manila, Philippines. He works primarily with video/film, music, and design. His works have been recently shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Design in College of St. Benilde, Manila (2015) and in Art Stage Singapore, Singapore City (2016). His recent solo exhibitions include Loose Continuity in 1335 Mabini, Manila (2015), New and Selected Video in Mo Space, Taguig (2016), and Untitled (Talks) in Blanc Gallery, Quezon City (2016). He was also included in Mind Set Art Center’s group show, Every Island from Sea to Sea, Taipei, Taiwan (2016). He is currently a faculty member at the College of Fine Arts’ Theory Department in the University of the Philippines, Quezon City.
Marga Ortigas
Marga Ortigas is a writer and broadcast journalist with a career spanning nearly 30 years over 5 continents. For CNN International, she covered the war in Iraq and worked across Europe from a base in London. In 2006, she returned to Manila and the Asia Pacific, reporting from throughout the region as senior correspondent for Al Jazeera. A British Council Chevening Scholar, Marga earned a Master of Arts degree in literature and criticism from the University of Greenwich. Her first novel is being published at the end of 2021, and she is the editor of “I, Migrant”, a website that showcases diasporic writing, championing the belief that beneath the trappings of people’s differences lies a universal humanity.
