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Samito Jalbuena
Plums for the young and crafty
SATURATE the world with color and design, and we can make the world a better place—but be sure to take note that some paints are brighter and some designs are bolder than others. This seemed to be the guiding principle behind the Nippon Paint Young Designer Award, which selected as its theme the phrase “Design With Heart” for this year’s iteration.
Shopping with the house on fire
IN the recent group exhibition Finders Keepers at Finale Art File in Makati City, young artists Nathalie Dagmang, Marge de Jesus, Ayka Go, Kitty Kaburo, Isha Naguiat and Henrielle Pagkaliwagan centered their processes on the idea of place and situation, and found these in the universe of home and domestic life—both as sites of reverence and repository of history and objects. One may indeed mutter about the femaleness of the enterprise and its glorious revelation that home is much referred to as a site of utopia and the locus where the female is found in all her glory, but is this girl power? Is this feminism unbound? If art is where the home is, does this sweet, almost feline, complacency mean that all is perfect and dandy at home?
How to say ‘I love you’? Be brilliant about it
HERE’S the best advice for girls and ladies: Enjoy all that life has to offer, but be ready to receive diamonds. Since love is that condition in which the happiness of another is essential to your own, you should expect the very best from the man who loves you. So think rocks.
More than pastry at The Pantry
IT may not be the newest avant garde dining concept to hit the table but farm-to-fork dining is here to stay. And now it’s made more palatable for those choice eaters who prefer the buffet style, also called the smorgasbord—albeit updated from its oh-so-traditional norms. Introducing The Pantry, Dusit Thani Manila’s new all-day dining restaurant, which opened recently to rave reviews.
Remembering ‘Forgotten Kingdoms’
AN unprecedented showering of gold is soon to dazzle the world—and the amazing fact is that these treasures all came from the Philippines. From September 11 through January 3 next year, Philippine gold, that once belonged to several “forgotten kingdoms” will be exhibited at the Asia Society Museum at 725 Park Avenue corner 70th Street in New York City. The show will feature dazzling precolonial gold largely from the Butuan-Surigao area of the Philippine south.
What makes art valuable?
THOSE who jump to conclusions often land in ignorance. And for every complex problem, there is an easy answer—and most of the time, it’s wrong. In the art world, these adages can crystallize to absolute brilliance. Many artists who “think” they are producing art on the edge of the avant garde will often delude themselves that they are producing art on the avant-garde edge. But, most of the time, a simple check with a set of parameters will reveal that they are wrong. What then makes art valuable?
Who are the world’s top art buyers?
AS the sun sets for another day in London, a new generation of art buyers eagerly looks forward to the evening’s hunt. Chantal Smith is barely in her 30s yet she has invested an enormous amount of time and money to amass what she calls a “modest” art collection. The rounds begin. She’s off to the first gallery in her must-see list, a compendium of art London’s up and comers.
The new Whitney: One of this year’s most anticipated art events
FOUNDED by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1930, the Whitney Museum of American Art—known as “The Whitney”—is a New York City art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art, and this institution last made headlines with a unprecedented retrospective of Jeff Koons some time ago. But that blockbuster exhibit has been replaced by a new gargantua.
Art market 101
A CONTINUING education on the art market is much needed for people who want to venture into this most exciting facet of late capitalism.
When will the art market crash?
BUOYED by such rocket-fueled price increases, competitive art collectors and dealers now scour both exotic locales and local art schools for new names in hopes of discovering new talent and making it big in the art market. But despite the aggressive market making and mapping of future possibilities, a few older market watchers look on with fear and trepidation, often with mouths open to ask the inevitable: Are you sure you know what you’re getting into, boy?
The envy of the museum world
WHEN major museums in the world’s capitals start to complain that they’ve been getting too many visitors, this sends a signal to local cultural workers in Manila and the rest of the country: If you can’t attain optimal visitor numbers, what you have been doing has proved wrong all this time.
They call him ‘Eggnest’
MARKING a departure from an earlier style of art production, Ernest Concepcion seems to remove the vestiges of the past in order to break new ground in a more mature phase of painting. And yet, as we read these words, the artist has begun another exciting series under wraps. The present art show is a group show where he only contributes three paintings, but how great this contribution is, secondary only to his best work.
Art-auction superstars
ARTNET, a global leader in art news and art-market analytics, recently released another survey that charts which blue-chip artists have performed the best from a financial standpoint in the past two decades. The results may surprise you if you haven’t been lending an extra ear to the often strange, secretive, yet compelling movements in the international art market.
Sell yourself first, then sell your art second
IF you are like the majority of artists, you live and breathe like other artists, recreate with artists, and swirl around those concentrated artsy-fartsy circles, so that fundamentally you’re all art all the time. Now, that can be boring yet excellent to a certain point. But you need to continuously broaden your horizons. That said, selling and making a big deal out of your art doesn’t have to be very difficult if you try to reach a progressively wider number of publics in vastly differentiated circumstances while staying true to your artistic vision. Of course, sometimes even art itself comes second to how well you kiss ass.