MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Silverlens is pleased to present Love is Like a Heat Wave, a major solo exhibition of the late Filipina-American artist Pacita Abad. Love is Like a Heat Wave celebrates the 20th anniversary of Circles in My Mind, Pacita’s landmark exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The exuberant exhibition would serve as the final presentation of the artist’s work, before her passing in 2004.
Pacita Abad, Love is Like A Heat Wave, 2004
The works in the show are part of a series of works on paper produced during her residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI) in 2003, where she explored her longstanding interest in color and material culture, through the boundless possibilities of paper-making, printmaking and painting.
Rounding out the exhibition are Pacita’s rarely exhibited floral oil-on-paper monoprints created during her residence in Jakarta in the late 1990s. Layers of delicately applied oil paint transferred onto paper, these compositions possess a tranquil tenderness that juxtaposes the ravenous abundance of most of Pacita’s oeuvre.
About Pacita Abad
Pacita Abad (b. 1946, Batanes, Philippines – d. 2004, Singapore) is known for her large-scale quilted trapunto paintings characterized by vibrant color and accumulated materials. Marked by vivid colors and intricate materials, her expansive paintings span a broad spectrum of themes, drawn in form and concept from a number of ethnic traditions of craft and thought. From portraying tribal masks and social scenes to intricate underwater landscapes and abstract forms, Abad’s work transcended borders.
In 2023, Abad was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at The Walker Art Center, which later traveled to SFMOMA. The exhibition will then travel to MoMA PS1 and Art Gallery Ontario in 2024– 2025. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the National Museum, Jakarta, Indonesia; Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, The Museum of Philippine Art, Manila; Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila; Bhirasri Museum of Modern Art, Bangkok, Thailand; Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore; The National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; and the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston, among others. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including: Beyond the Border: Art by Recent Immigrant, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Asia/ America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art, a traveling exhibition organized by the Asia Society, New York; Olympiad of Art, National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, Korea; 2nd Asian Art Show, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan; and La Bienal de Habana, Havana, Cuba.
