"AbstracSIOn II" at Maribago Bluewater

Academic training has exposed Dennis ‘Sio’ Montera, initially, in creating realist-inspired nature visual artworks before he finally found his own illustrative language. On his fifth-year as an artist, he came back to Cebu City armed with a Masters degree in painting earned from University of the Philippines. Sio mounted two important solo exhibitions on abstract art at the Art Center of SM City Cebu and Bluewater Gallery of Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort. These shows received accolade from critics and collectors, alike, and brought to the community a fresh take on serious visual art. That two special occasions baptized Sio as one of the few visual artists who have taken the road less travelled – the exploration of the non-objective realm in mainstream art.

Sio, as his intimates call him, takes inspiration from the likes of Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet, Cy Twombly, Jean Michel Basquiat and Antoni Tapies. He admits that Philippine artists like Nestor Vinluan, Lao Lianben, and Jose Joya joins the list of artists that stirred him to undertake a personal experiment materials, tools and effects.

Sio Montera began to mix industrial materials with the conventional artist’s paints. After hundreds of hours of test and trials he succeeded in integrating diverse resources into a convincing overall composition. His canvasses are condensed into massive, encrusted color-filled paintings of either gestural lines or scratched surfaces. The lines created in his gestural works often resemble coagulated ink blots that glide from one corner to the other with total abandon and freedom. The scratched/scraped picture plane is the most recent reinvention of the artist’s style and the indentations on the surface of the paintings function like individual graffiti, the artist set of personal coded references inscribed on the work’s ground like hardened symbols or signs.

In this latest exhibition dubbed “AbstracSIOn II” which opened to the public last August 14, the artist metaphorically combines artistic production with immediate experiences of his human existence. Each of the works creates an overall effect that is based from the language of the artist’s soul and is considered by him as emblems and symbolic indications of his presence in this short life. These new installment of Sio Montera’s work has also taken distance from the linear logic of adults to arrive at the impulsive logic of children. The created visual field reassures flatness that is both direct and embracing typical of the spontaneity inherent in the spur-of-the-moment, scribble drawings. They represent for him an extraordinary mirror for multiplying or shattering imagery to reinvent or exorcize life.

The said exhibit of 26 interesting contemporary artworks opened with a ribbon-cutting with the exhibit’s guest of honors namely: Creative Cebu’s Meg Osmeña, Canadian Art aficionado Mark Milne, Maribago Bluewater’s General Manager Rhyz Buac and the artist’s associate and close friend Jude Bacalso. Bluewater Gallery will feature Dennis “Sio” Montera’s exhibit from August 14 to September 12, 2009. For exhibit viewing appointment, get in touch with Gallery Coordinator Ruben B. Licera, Jr. at (63 32) 492 0100 local 512 or email [email protected].