2012 Ateneo Art Awards : Sneak peek
MANILA, Philippines - Now in its ninth year, the Ateneo Art Awards continues to shine the spotlight on outstanding young artists below the age of 36. The awards are given to three artists who have contributed to the development of Philippine contemporary art in the past year. The Ateneo Art Awards are presented by Ateneo Art Gallery, YStyle of The Philippine STAR, Shangri-la Plaza, Metro Society, and the NewYork Art Project funded by Marcel Crespo.
The shortlist
Every week from now until the awarding on August 9, YStyle will be featuring two of the 12 artists in the running for the awards.
Kawayan de Guia
Already a two-time winner of the Ateneo Art Awards, De Guia continues to amaze with his multi-media exhibitions that take mundane material and subject matter and make them worthy of our attention and contemplation. In his exhibition "A Lot of Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing," he creates pictures recalling the golden age of Philippine cinema when people flocked to movie houses. Now cast aside for the more convenient Cineplex in malls, or dvd at home, they are in the vernacular “nilalangaw,” as are his portraits of celebrities — literally — created with fly paper, flies and charcoal. In the center of it all stands a majestic dark horse, (harbinger of doom perhaps?) made of movie reels and horns (torotot). His deft use of material to capture attention and create layers of meaning is classic Kawayan.
Kawayan de Guia, “Independencia Filipina, Times Theater, Quiapo, 2011,” mixed media on canvas Vermont Coronel
His milieu is the street — confronted by its rawness as he bikes around Metro Manila — he surreptitiously transforms it with stencils and spray paint. Although followers of graffiti art have long been treated to his creations, "Spirit of a Place" is his first solo gallery show. He does not venture far from his roots, using the same materials — stencil and spray paint — on canvas as he does on concrete, resulting in wonderfully detailed depictions of city fragments. Unlike the speed with which we associate the work of street artists, Coronel’s process is painstaking and meticulous. From photos he’s taken, he creates the stencil patterns; using at least three for each painting, it gives them depth and dimensionality. In the ghostly black, white and grey paintings emerge gritty and poetic images of our urban environment.
