Clearly through the glass

MANILA, Philippines – Forty years after he first worked with glass as an art medium, Ramon Orlina has found yet another frontier to work with. In a sold-out show at the expanded Museo Orlina in Tagaytay are 23 sculptures carved out of clear optical glass, a material used mainly for electronics and optics, and for the automotive and aviation industries.

This most industrial material takes on a luminous poetry as each piece reflects and refracts light with a clarity and purity that his previous mediums – his signature green glass as well as those in amber, lavender, azure and pink – did not afford.

This exhibit is a happy return for Orlina to optical glass: he first used it in 1999 for his entry to the Toyomura Sculpture Biennale in Japan, where “Silvery Moon” took the special “Mr. F. Prize.”

“Clear Impressions” at the Reflections Gallery of Museo Orlina opened with a two-piano concert by Ingrid Sala-Santamaria and Cecile Roxas, part of year-long celebrations marking Orlina’s four decades as an artist.

Museo Orlina has doubled its exhibition area, and includes a new space housing a rare collection of classical sculptures of Isabelo Tampinco. This exhibit will give the public a better appreciation of this unheralded genius, a contemporary of Rizal and Luna who remained in the Philippines and did significant work, especially in and for churches.

Museo Orlina is located in Bgy. Toleration East, Hollywood Subd., Tagaytay. Visit www.museo-orlina.org for directions and museum hours.