MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The SILVERLENS gallery is opening up its first online only show, “Anticipating the Day,” on Tuesday, June 2, 2020. The show marks the two months the Philippines has spent in isolation, with works featured on its social media series #athomewith and pieces made during the pandemic by artists Martha Atienza, Frank Callaghan, James Clar, Chati Coronel, Nicole Coson, Corinne de San Jose, Dina Gadia, Patricia Perez Eustaquio, Gregory Halili, Mit Jai Inn, Pow Martinez, Wawi Navarroza, Elaine Navas, Renato Orara, Gina Osterloh, Bernardo Pacquing, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Hanna Pettyjohn, Norberto Roldan, Ryan Villamael, and Eric Zamuco.
Silverlens Founder and Director Isa Lorenzo, shared an essay she wrote on the show:
Out of necessity, we are forced to find our better selves. Artist Gina Osterloh presents us with Obliterate. A body wrapped in foil – female in form, a gesture of strength. She prepares a second piece: a shadow body, slightly turned towards it’s mirror. The real versus the silhouette, a splitting of the real, but into whole parts. The information of materiality versus the code. In our Silverlens gallery, we must straddle these two, our onsite gallery and our digital doppelganger. Taking form from both, the gallery is the system by which visual art is announced, experienced, consumed. More than a platform, it is a machine of hard processes and soft energies, kept breathing by our artists, our team, our collectors, and our audiences.
Our Covid19-breaker show, Anticipating the Day, is only online. Instead of installing the works in the gallery, they are installed in the artist’s studios, in-situ. Showing a more raw, but also more alive and organic part of the process. It is a melding of what we showed during lockdown through our social media #athomewith series, and works that the artists have been making while on lockdown. Artist Gregory Halili reminded us that art goes on, and we could not agree more, as almost all our artists are participating in Anticipating the Day.
A good sign. This is a way things will be for us. A heavily digital presence with more information, more access. Impersonal at first because experienced through a screen. But haven’t our most intimate moments in the last few months been experienced through a screen? The physical space has moved into the mindspace. The most important is to be connected. All of us.
From the various texts that the artists sent in, and at the risk of oversimplification, here are ideas from each that can help pull Anticipating the Day together. The title is taken from artist Nicole Coson’s description of what lockdown is for her.
“Them” is all of us – Chati Coronel
Step back, think about what we are capable of, and be very deliberate – Hanna Pettyjohn
Beautiful and disturbing – Pow Martinez Process and catharsis – Bernardo Pacquing
Isolated but not remote – Renato Orara
The lone soldier – Gary-Ross Pastrana
Fragility in physical state and content – Gregory Halili
The hopes are a new civility, flourishing respect, and deeper appreciation for what we all do in our daily lives, at work and at home. Now, do we really want to go back to the way things were done before? It is reasonable to keep going at certain things. But on the whole, we rebalance. Welcome back to Silverlens!
Anticipating the Day starts on Tuesday, 2 June 2020. See the show on the Silverlens website and through its online catalogue.
View the exhibit at silverlensgalleries.com
