Words by CJ Peradilla
Photos by Vnita Sohal
Amidst the bustling city and hidden behind a BDO branch at Chino Roces Extension, The Alley at Karrivin plaza houses tenants from art galleries to lifestyle shops sure to bring the urban denizen quite the nostalgia for simpler, quieter times.
Established just last year, several pop-up stores at The Alley have already struck waves among the culture-savvy public, some of which include The Drawing Room, a quaint gallery housing the some of the most cutting-edge, contemporary pieces, and Aphro Living, a lifestyle shop and art gallery filled with ornate, eccentric finds.
1-3. The gallery manifests traditional media’s transcendence beyond tangible form, and, consequently, the confines of what makes art ‘art.’
The Drawing Room
Established in 1998, the Drawing Room gallery previously featured and specialized in artwork on paper, hence its name. Drawings, sketches and other artistic practices using paper as a medium held intimate value for gallery owner Cesar Villalon, Jr., but as the landscape of contemporary Philippine art unfolded, new and interesting artistic practices and work started arriving.
The Drawing Room eventually progressed into a gallery for contemporary Filipino art, maintaining a curatorial and career-oriented management of its artists, as well as displaying artwork which Villalon holds dear. Its artists represent the Philippines in a constant, frenetic flux – very removed from journalistic portrayals of its historical and contemporary society.
Each work to appear in an exhibition investigates concepts of diaspora, transition, and aims to project a critical approach towards neocolonialism.
The Drawing Room serves a fusion of minimalism and the elegance of traditional elements. With every show, the gallery has welcomed a consistent audience, each one eager to experience art in ways previously unimaginable.
Navigating the landscape of contemporary Filipino art, The Drawing Room continues to create different curatorial projects, offering its artists and its audience an avenue to converge.
4-5. From Kafkaesque pastiches to elaborately woven furniture, chic (if eclectic) finds await visitors of Aphro.
Aphro Living
Aphro, short for Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty and pleasure, emerged as a concept store from owner Tina Fernandez’s love for art. Aptly named “living art and design,” the store is filled with objects created by artists, bags designed in a fashion that takes off from architectural structures and inspired by specific artwork, local pottery, and other eclectic, inspired pieces reminiscent of how art betters the quality of life.
Certainly interesting, the architecture of the space resembles a modern-looking temple, whose wooden stairs lead up to the space’s apex. For the thrill-seeking visitor, there is an option to descend from the space’s upper deck via a giant slide.
“I love everything in the store,” Fernandez recalls, “That is the basis for choosing them. One precious piece is the table by visual artist Ling Quisumbing, the legs of which were created out of a carpenter’s tool box, used pencils and other objects which people discard. It shows the landscape of Central Park reminiscent of the artist’s life in New York.”
Truly one-of-a-kind, most of the pieces in Aphro hail from various artists who work with Fernandez in her gallery, Artinformal, while other pieces come from designers she admires. Everything in the store, from the well-designed interiors, to artwork, to objects, to accessories, Fernandez further notes, reflect what Aphro is all about.
This article was published in the adobo magazine Design 2017 issue.
