timlandia

The show at Green Papaya Art Space space in Teacher’s Village, Quezon City opened last Wednesday to a great crowd from the Filipino Arts scene. I was really stoked to show at Green Papaya because it is another artist run gallery half way across the world, and it wasn’t surprising to find that these weirdos on the art scene are just like my homies back in Austin: humble, hospitible, and interested in contemporary art from a global perspective– I have to say, however, that Green Papaya is ahead of Okay Mountain in presenting TransMedia art to the unsuspecting art public of Manila.

The Artists are:

Heyd Fontenot and I barely knew each other before the trip began, but I just knew that he would be a great traveling companion– all of these thoughts have been confirmed since we’ve arrived. He just completed a whopping eighteen large paintings at his residency in Newfoundland, and brought at least four of them for the show here. His sultry portraits of friends in the Austin scene are equal parts portraiture, abstraction, and design.
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Louie Cordero’s, stuff, to me, is perfectly Filipino: dense, colorful, and beautifully grotesque– he is a butt-kicker to be sure, showing at Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York, Giant Robot in Los Angeles, and being one of the 13 young contemporary artists who were honored by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. As I start to blog, you might keep an eye on the list of these thirteen, because many of these artists form a tight knit clan that forms part of the contemporary scene in Manila.
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Mariano Ching is another of these thirteen, and before I came over I had no idea what his stuff would look like because of his minimal web presence. But what he brought was awesomely original and surprising– I knew when he brought his stuff in that we would have a BIG show with many looks and lots of ideas floating around. I need to get better photos of his smaller works, but below is one of the paintings he exhibited.
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I had brought an installation in a duffle bag with me (weight 26.7 pounds, according to the Amtrak scale) and nine small pieces– I had a ridiculous amount of work to do when i got here, so my first week was spent painting at Louie’s studio finishing paintings and hanging out with he and local rock/ art icon Romeo Lee

That’s all I have for the time being– gotta go tourist for awhile in the city– check back soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Installations, Paintings. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.