Manilart 2010 Gala Night

With a total of over 55 fine art galleries patronizing the fine arts, the Manilart Festival 2010 was a huge success, gathering thousands of esteemed collectors, passionate artists, accredited professors and tasteful curators all under one roof of communication; the language of art.

Centering mainly on the field of visual arts, the array of colorful narratives boasted over 700 unique works of art from every corner of the Philippines. The night was topped off by a tempting roving dinner set of cocktails, gourmet pastas, and trays of exotic dishes.

Guests marveled at the creative side of the Filipino often admired for his experimental attitude of civil discovery and specific taste for mindful, socially related art.

The Artasia Gallery housed artists such as Baldemor, Dizon, and two generations of Chua, as the floor lit up with expectant gazes and witty conversations. Being one of the few pioneers of modern sculpture exhibition in the Philippine art circles, the gallery was able to sell several of its signature artist’s pieces including  original cast marble, sheet brass and alabaster creations. Bringing back the success of last year’s Manilart 2009, this year’s showcase was wildly more vibrant, exploring more diverse media and delving into subject matter previously unheard of.



Certainly a timeless memory for ages to come, the event will hold a great influence over the change of tide in the new and upcoming motifs stirring amidst the society of artists in the country.

Sculpture TED Talk at the Ateneo

For inspiration on matters of the world, from art, to marketing, to business to innovation, TED is one of the best events to catch on your road to discovery. Here is their worldwide network: http://www.ted.com/
 

Last year, the Ateneo Innovation Center actually sponsored an independently organized TED event of its own. I was surprised when my friend Mattew Cua (organizer of the event) asked me to be one of the first in-school TED speakers and to talk about my development and discovery in the field of cast abstract sculpture. Looking back, I remember talking about innovating the sculpture world by integrating new exhibition techniques in and out of the physical world. I made some mentions and gave insights regarding my thesis, a planned web platform to offer multi-view galleries online for sculpture (which is now being applied to day by some galleries I’ve come into contact with).

 
I was able to share knowledge alongside several influential design and science influences in the Ateneo community. Other projects included Margaret Kawsek’s Polygon Project which fused the art nature of paper origami to light elements using LED bulbs, and Elvis Tan’s Speech on the development of Algae as a renewable resource using artificial lights.
 

You can find the Event Article at the Press Site of the Ateneo Innovation Center 

The beauty of this TED event at the Ateneo de Manila university, is it allowed students to think and drive creative ideas out on their own by watching other people talk about their passions and life-beats. I watch speakers on the TED web network quite often for inspiration, but I never thought I’d actually get to be one of them. That was an experience I’ll always remember. 

From Creation to Publication

Finding time apart from my hands-on endeavors, I'm currently trying to pursue sculpture exposure in the realm of print design. Collaborating with a select team of graphic designers and copywriters, I'm brainstorming a one of a kind portfolio-type of publication to be launched sometime in the next year.

It will be a culmination of both visual narratives and literary stories tied hand in hand to each piece on the pages, merging elements into a seemless journey through art language and abstract space.

I'm hopeful that the project can blend all three elements of graphic design, three dimensional art, and written word, unto a single media that will be the first portfolio of its kind, to be displayed and permanently housed by the Artasia Gallery in SM Megamall.

Nearing the Manilart 2010

Hi guys, I hope many of you can drop by the Manilart 2010 Nationwide exhibition at the SMX Convention Center. The grand festival's gala night (by-invitation-only), will serve as a preview to the entire art fair and will be held from 6 to 10 pm on July 29, 2010. Hundreds of Filipino galleries and artists will make themselves present during this once in a lifetime exhibit, and a showcase of talent from around the country will manifest through the series of days.




The Artasia Gallery will be participating all throughout the exhibit and will be maintained by gallery persona, owners, and several resident artists alike. My dad (Seb Chua) and I, will be hosting our booth on the opening gala, and we invite you guys to drop by for a sneak peak at some of out new art collections, as well as the modern pieces of many other artists who have honored the gallery with their magnificent works.


Here's the Running Schedule:

July 30 - August 1, 2010
Hall 4, SMX Convention Center
Pasay City, Philippines

Moving Through A Still Existence

One of the interesting things you can see in sculpture, is movement. It is also the most contradictory element the media possesses.

The beauty of an art piece’s perceptual movement can be captivating. Even if the piece does not concretely change its position from one form to another, its characteristic somehow takes a magnificent scene of action, and holds it in time.

The best explanation I can give you is to picture the notes of a musical composition. Together, though written into a single space, they create something wonderfully unexplainable to linguistics. What is the rhythm in a melody? It is a breathless word, in a wordless song. The movement in sculpture, is a melody. It speaks through the eyes, of something that exists in a captured frame, yet tells of elements that come from an entirely different place. Energy, distance, time, balance… the limit does not care for how much this media defies reason and law. It bodes the artist to imagine and charge at the very edge of what seems possible to human understanding about what art should be.

Working on the 360 Degree Web Gallery.

These days where modern internet galleries have populated across the global networking community, there stands a challenge for artists and art patrons alike to exhibit their works online with a great deal of impact and effect.

The standard two dimensional platform that most websites provide with their albums and picture sharing simply will not be able to give due credit to the millions of sculpture artisans out there who produce their work in full multi-dimensional designs. This has taken my interest for quite sometime now, and I'm currently working on some projects that will help create a new way for sculptors to exhibit their works in all true beauty and accuracy. The 360 degree viewing gallery isn't a completely novel concept, but in the realm of art, few institutions have bothered to implement or venture into this method of showcasing art.

Hopefully in the next few weeks, I'll be able to show some updates or the actual web gallery before its launch, but I'm very excited for this is something incredibly depth-creating in the field of online dimensional art exhibition.

"Calla Lily" - The Piece Created on October 1st, My Birthday.

When I turned 21, I was creating a piece that resembled a flower I saw at my grandmother's garden back when we still lived at her place. They told me it was a Calla lily, a flower that seemed as if it had no petals. That particular one just happened to be white with a hint of grey on the sides. I remember that flower distinctly in my memory. It had the semblance of a sharp bell, with a mild curved tip. This piece, more than anything commendable by detail or design, is special to me because of another story. It was near this time, when I first got to bond with the girl I'm in love with today.

She came over to my house, and played around with my clay. It was of course, my birthday party and many of my other friends had come over as well. By this time, everyone at my party had known about my feelings, except her. It was a strange but nice coincidence that we held my party in the attic -where I sculpt on days of rainy weather. I remember there was a huge storm that day, but as the party trailed on, people started to grab the clay near Calla lily and shape forms out of the mass. Some made mushrooms, while others made action figures. Some of my friends even made grenade bullets to throw at this one guy.

It was on this day, that the clay I used for sculpting, became just another smile for everyone. Calla lily stayed there on my work desk, as I secretly combed the hair of that girl with clay-smitten hands. Obviously, it stuck. We had heck of a time getting it out too, but before we did, everyone else joined in the joke and we all ended up with green streaks on our heads.

-that was the day I realized that I had to get her to notice me.

From then on, there were numerous stories that came by, shaking the very fabric of my life as I knew it, but a lot of things started on that day, and I remember it when I look at this sculpture.

Kylo Chua and The Framework of Sculpture

A brief narrative on the visual power of sculpture as a contemporary medium in art society. The creation of sculpture is as limitless and as unrestricted as modern art should be, impelling the free expressionist to create and mold according to the mannerisms of personal taste and an interpersonal life. Abstract sculpture holds a great potential for being a forerunner of emotive creation and free expression.



The forefront of sculpture, is presence. You know something’s there. Everytime you walk into a room with an artwork you feel it staring back at you. The tangibility of something that takes up space, is a lot different when you recognize it with all of your senses.

With painting or photography, implied presence is often a characteristic manipulated to acquire that illusion of depth, but with sculpture, the dimensional framework is actually there in front of you. You can feel it with your hands, you can perceive it with your mind, some artists even go as far as integrating taste and sound into their body of work, just to give that little uniqueness everyone wants to find in a strong media such as this.

The anatomical possibilities of creating a work are simply boundless. You can explore concepts and designs that test or break the laws of reason and physics.
The birth of branching genres in the media gave rise to its contemporary popularity as well: Abstract sculpture and compositions of hybrid media, followed by kinetic sculpture and different forms of technological design. These are landmarks in the history of an ongoing story.

Life is an Artwork

It's been about four years since my first piece "Her Elusive" was brought out onto show. It makes me wonder about what could happen in the next four years of my life.

When I was 16, I played around with a pen and paper in my dad's studio atelier. I drew shapes and contours of many varying objects. One of which, was a woman sculpture made by another artist left to dry. Every day I would constantly see newer pieces being moulded and burnished at the workshop. I couldn't keep my eyes of a seemingly unending narrative of characters, scenes and worlds all cast in bronze and marble.

I loved art ever since I could remember. Somehow my family's long heritage of artistry spread into my own veins at an early age. I drew and painted by the time I was 3, harboring some of my family trends into my own hobbies during my free time. I also moved into graphic design and poetic literature by the time my high school started. The media of sculpture however, was a fascination that I deeply wanted to learn for a long time.

Eventually, biding my time at the studio paid off, as I was able to witness more and more techniques from my dad and from talents that came by for residency with our group. I started my career in 2006, and had my first participation in a group show not long after. "Sculptural Serendipity" was also one of the first big group shows that the Artasia Gallery held on site, and I was very fortunate to be able to include my second piece "Celestial" among the roster of works for display.

It's been a long while since then, but I believe the road ahead will be filled with great lessons, wonderful people, and memorable legacies. I love where art has touched the foundations of my life, and I will be doing this passion for the many more decades to come..
 

Photos taken by Tricia Gosingtian during the Ateneo LSAA Awards 2010

"Luna" in Handcast Marble

I've recently finished a piece inspired by the Celestial collection this week, and I'm proud to say that 'Luna' is currently on display in my home gallery collection for now. Like most of my eve works, she is handcast in marble with a pure titanium white lacquer and gloss. Her stature sits on a natural Narra wood base, carved into a secondary focus point.

Luna is one of my favorite single pieces to date, because she carries a fluid contour that is very similar to the very first Celestial piece, however I've highlighted her subject to a more arched disposition than the previous. In the coming month, or maybe the next, she will be displayed at the Artasia Gallery in SM Megamall for public exhibition with the sculpture show. There's a slight chance you may catch her at the national Manilart' Festival at the end of July as well. If so, we'll be showing at the Artasia Gallery Booth on the festival dates.

Inspired by the arch of a crescent moon, this intrepid work is an tribute to the natural design of God. I shaped it with a dual viewpoint in mind, creating a sideways fluidity into the piece as well. Her semi-oblong length is a piercing space to the surrounding air, while the Narra wood base confines her leap into a single height of motion. The use of white and natural wood creates a combination I've been beginning to use in many of my more recent works. The contemporary visual relation of the two distinctly opposite patterns gives rise to a favored effect on the sculpture in natural light.

Luna is one of my featured works for the month of July.

This artwork is part of my personal collection for the month, but will be brought out for show in the coming exhibitions. For reservation or price matters, you can email me at chuakylo@gmail.com or my usual yahoo address (kylochua@yahoo.com)

Behind the Figure Eight

When creating my pieces even from the very beginning, I always try to find an ideal shape for the initial design. Nothing over complicated, just a simple wave or archway to guide my hands when I start on the clay or wireframe. It's not surprising to me though, how most of my works gradually take form as a figure eight or as a flowing infinity symbol. This draws from my early upbringing through decades of Chinese cultural heritage that have influenced deep roots in me and my visual language.

While my abstract motif centers on a human play of modern romance, my structural composition comes from an intrepid drawing of the eternality symbolized by the well known character of figure eight. I was born in the year 1988 (zodiac year of the Chinese Dragon), and to our cultural society, eight symbolized a continuation of fortunate existence. It meant an abundance in whatever good that has come to manifest itself in our lives. To this day, Chinese regale the number eight as an emblem of forever and longevity.

I believe that in my art, this figure creates a narration of a bond that can withstand the test of an ageless time. Through its incorporation into my composition, I wanted to create a notion of everlasting emotive expression, imbuing itself onto the human feelings of love and perpetual bliss. Such a thought always crosses my mind as I ponder on why my drawings and sculptures reflect so commonly on the armature of this famous shape. I react naturally to this idea, that humanity can in fact withstand countless oppositions in its journey through the beauties and goodness.

Porcelain Sculpture

Many of my friends know how much I love Lladro’s high porcelain figurines. Their porcelain is famous world-wide for being one of the best there is. One day, I hope to follow their footprints onto the same artistic path. So where has my journey taken me now? I’ve come across one certain city: Jingdezheng. It is the undisputed porcelain capital of Asia, housing hundreds of independent craftsmen, moldmakers and glaze artists. The natural surroundings themselves, add to the tranquil inspiration for many local and international ceramic artists who take up monthly residencies there at the many workshops.

I'm currently admiring all the works and research that the residency does there. China, of course is the pioneer when it comes to porcelain, even in historical timelines. I'm pondering on a possible trip in the near future so that I can learn from some of the world's best in the field and apply my own abstract style to this wonderful medium.

This city’s porcelain has been famously described to be as thin as paper, as white as jade, as bright as a mirror, and as resounding as a bell. Producing both hard and soft-paste porcelain, the famous Chinese
heritage is known for its many significant achievements in the
manufactury of luxury and everyday items alike. A blue and white
porcelain jar from Jingdezhen (made during the Yuan Dynasty) was
auctioned off for the equivalent of 230,000,000 ( RMB) yuan in London,
UK in July 12, 2005. A little piece of trivia: this deal was the
highest price achieved by one piece of porcelain in the history of all
porcelain auctions of the world.

Another majestic place I was able to stumble upon in my research, was the European city of Herend. Located near the city of Veszprém in Hungary, Herend holds an esteemed reputation in the manufactury of fine, hand-painted porcelain.

Being the counterpart of Jingdezhen in the West, Herend’s famous porcelain has spread the world over with its lustrous beauty and development, all crafted and retouched by the artisans who call the city home. This destination is a bit farther than the Asian porcelain city, however the curiosity of a visit struck me pretty close. I bet it would be a great place to travel for collectors and artists alike, being that the output of art in their area manifests in a great quality like no other. Hard-paste porcelain is used to commit to historically acclaimed patterns named after some of Herend’s very first elite patrons; Viktória, Esterházy, and Batthyány. Many of their bisque pieces are unique to the luxury of aristocracy and nobility, being painted and trimmed with gold in elegant design stencils. In 1964, Herend opened its own Porcelain Museum, which represents the city’s history in the manufacturing and decoration of the medium. It won the award for Hungary’s museum of the year in 2002. Design artists, wheel potters, painters and mold-makers alike find this place to be a lasting and long term place to develop their craft.

Presentation I Found From Last Year's Sculpture Talk at Ateneo

I remember the talk on abstraction I gave at the former Rizal Library last school year at the university. Recently I dug up the keynote presentation that I used and turned it into a movie file to place here on the Blog for memories. :-) It was just a little something I whipped up to help the students understand what I was talking about. It always helps to have something to show.