Arts...Travels...Writing

My daughter and I checked out the Art Stage at the Marina Bay Sands Expo today. It was a huge fair with around 150 galleries from around the globe participating. As such, we could not really explore all the galleries (a bit overwhelming for one afternoon), so what we did was take a quick tour, and lingered only on those that caught our interest more. There was a bunch of European galleries that represented the established (Chagall, Miro, Picasso, etc), but even without my prompting, little girl preferred to stick around longer in the contemporary art exhibits and the visual/digital/3D installations --- in between her main preoccupation that afternoon, i.e., collecting business/calling cards from the galleries.  Below are some of the stand outs: Mark Justiniani's Echopraxia: Reflective media, light fixtures, and objects encased in black iron structure My daughter describes the above as magic because it is endless, and seems to go on and on! Such is the magic of Just...

'A maelstrom is a very powerful whirlpool or large swirling body of water.' Maelstrom, part of the Philippine Art Trek series, successfully brought in monumental works from Philippines, and I was hugely awestruck by the immensity of it all! After all, on exhibit are works of art in epic proportions (214x427 cm or bigger)...not the typical drawing-room variety. If paintings could literally speak, then this batch is on super loud-speaker mode albeit the type that vibrates and echoes only with pleasant sound. The messages are rich and multi-layered too - the exhibit being a cross-sectional and cross-generational representation of Philippine art. Altogether Maelstrom leaves a wonderful and uplifting sensorial experience. I've always been in awe at the knack of Pinoy artists in creating deceptively simple visual arts, but which upon closer inspection have profound messages. 'Line Up' (shown below), for example, is neat, neutral, and symmetrical. It is suppo...