MANILA, PHILIPPINES — This March, Silverlens Manila presents a powerful pairing of exhibitions that delve deep into materiality, memory, and the intricate ties that bind us to place, history, and identity. Opening on March 20, 2025, Reflections, in situ by Jon and Hanna Pettyjohn, and Membranes by Nicole Coson, showcase three distinct yet resonant practices that converge around the tactile, the sculptural, and the poetic.
Reflections, in situ by Jon and Hanna Pettyjohn features individual sculptures and collaborative works. Both artists have a deep connection to the landscape of the Philippines. In Jon’s case the and around his and his artist wife Tessy’s home and studio at the base of Mount Makiling is essential to understanding his sense of artmaking defined by a distinguishing materiality; his ethos is to craft forms that retain a kind of embodied fingerprint born from his sensitivities to locale. This emphasis on transforming and honoring raw materials uncovered often near his studio compound, helps define the spirit to much of Jon’s well-known objects and utilitarian vessels.
Hanna is also intent on thinking about how material specificity impacts the meanings of her art making. In her paintings and sculptures, she draws connections between her personal history growing up within a ceramic-making family and the art ingredients she repeatedly experimented with over her lifetime. Hanna habitually delineates a relationship between the striations of mud, clay, and dirt seen in the landscape of her birth with the layered qualities of garments or with genealogical portraits of herself and her family.
Two everyday objects form the focal point of Membranes: Styrofoam mesh fruit casing and standard plastic shipping crates. Both ubiquitous in the global food supply chain, they speak to the vast journeys that perishable goods undergo before eventual consumption—even those typically perceived as “local” or “native.”
Coson’s practice originates in printmaking. In her work, the serial logic of the medium is pushed towards new conceptual affinities. In Membranes, Coson presents a continuation of her experiments in the expanded field of printmaking and painting: large-scale impressions of plastic crates, a standardized form created to be easily stackable and transported across large distances. Accompanying her canvases is a new body of work titled Vanitas, sculptures of Styrofoam fruit mesh scattered like food across a table.
Reflections, in situ and Membranes are on view from March 20 to April 25, 2025 at Silverlens Manila, with an opening reception on March 20, from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM. For inquiries, visit www.silverlensgalleries.com
