hold yr horses

Holidaze

2011-12-16T19:23:00.000+08:00

My collages for our group show It Doesn’t Snow in Manila.

It Doesn’t Snow in Manila is on view from the 13th of December until December 27, 2011.

Main Gallery, Artinformal: 277 Connecticut St. Greenhills East, Mandaluyong, Philippines

You can view the works from the show here http://www.artinformal.com/exhibits/view/61

I'm also part of Manila Contemporary's December show 12 Days of Xmas.

Check it out here http://manilacontemporary.com/current-exhibitions/2011/11/1724

Accidental, Brunette and No Style TV Ruined My Imagination

Holiday Wrapper Wrestle Dazzle

The exhibit namesake was from the 80s new wave cult hit from the local band Dean’s December fronted by bluesman Binky Lampano. It was a chong anthem declarative of sophomoric nationalist/anti-colonialist sentiments, that snow only falls in America, a naïve injunction of a fantasy from the subliminal persuasion of the Hollywood machine. But this seems insipidly juvenile in this post globalized post capitalist economy which barely feels imperialist again by another super entity which is bigger than America, or even how we have been made to believe then of America’s invincibility as a world superpower. A winter of discontent has blanketed it since stock market crashes have become the order of the day.

A snowed landscape seems magical, unreal, fantastic and serene but when stretched far too wide sky and ground seem intermingled in a dulling blur. The genericness of all that white being leaden depressing blunting all the wonder and magic with the cutting coldness of such bleakness. Hard liquour never melts it away.

A seeming winter by proxy here in the tropics are relentless typhoons, with its over -all grayness dampening lethargic yet not as leaden as snow. It’s rather a dynamic gray of wild whirling winds, thrashing trees and brutal snapping of electric poles .It’s fickle gray with all the frayed edges of its manic fidgeting, it’s ochreish gray of flooded pavements dotted with rotting vermin carcasses and sienna flicked turds. No mere blackness or no mere whiteness, no pureness, all variegated shades of gray in deepening and lightening degrees of half truths or relative truths in whose dailies dirty laundries are continually aired out and whitewashed for someone’s filthier racier laundry.

Holidays are bleached white spackled with the tacky sheen of green and red foil baubles, as bleached as amnesia that induces us into snow globe utopias. A picture is in a way a proposition to utopia drafted on sheets of paper and on stretched canvases and in between pressed glass and wood. A picture is never neutral in all shades of grayness, blackness and whiteness. A picture that is monochromatic doesn’t present one view, nor one singular authoritative reading, nor do Technicolor pictures warrant an avalanche of meaning. In all, pictures seek a viewer to affirm its being a picture just as weather phenomenon need terrain to precipitate on its coalesced constituents of air, electricity and water.

But still the fact remains, it doesn’t snow in Manila, and will never ever be. But the show with the namesake presents propositions to varying shades of whiteness, grayness and blackness, a picture of such utopia/dystopia. The singular mono clarity hopes to cut through the blasé vagueness of dissolved horizons, as photographs, as paintings, as drawings, as illustrations, as collages by Vic Balanon, Allan Balisi, Charles Buenconsejo, Mariano Ching, Lena Cobangbang, Mike Crisostomo, Dina Gadia, Maria Jeona, Sam Kiyoumarsi, Jacob Lindo, Pow Martinez, Ian Quirante, Albert Sy, Marvin Tojos and Costantino Zicarelli.

Words by: Lena Cobangbang

It came without warning

2011-12-16T17:40:00.003+08:00

Some of my works for Pulse Miami 2011. Special thanks to Silverlens Gallery for bringing my works.

Check out http://artinfo.com/news/story/753065/the-best-and-worst-of-the-2011-pulse-miami-art-fair

http://www.silverlensphoto.com/newsletter.php?date=2011-11

Nude Happening, collage 2011

It came without warning 1, collage 2011

It came without warning 2, collage 2011

Devil in the Detail, collage 2011

Prints! Prints! Print!

2011-12-16T14:54:00.009+08:00

Silkscreen prints for the show Recent Prints (Nov 12-Dec 3) at D.A.G.C. (Department of Avant-Garde Clichés)

with Soler Santos, Luis Santos and Jigger Cruz.

Visit the D.A.G.C. website for more! http://www.dagcgallery.com

Special thanks to Soler Santos, West Gallery and DAGC

Tired Heads, 2011

Meaning Gone, Resemblance Retained, 2011 (photo from D.A.G.C.)

Position, 2011 (photo from D.A.G.C.)

Installation view: w/ works by Luis Santos and Jigger Cruz (photo from D.A.G.C.)

Dina Gadia presents the failure to communicate as a step towards the production of new alternate meanings.

Her deconstruction of mass media signs conspires to present a comedy of errors, reveling within while being lost in translation,

and provides joyful relief in the anxious vacuum of meaning.

Text from the Recent Prints exhibition notes here.

Also in print! My works featured in Kult magazine's Neo Folk Issue.

Many thanks to Kult3d and Steve/Mojoko! Hope to meet you too one day!

http://www.kult.com.sg/

http://www.kult.com.sg/magazine/IS7-neofolk.php

Above: Kult Mag Neo Folk Issue Cover
Neo Folk explores the work of artists in Asia who have been rediscovering their roots and traditional crafts, by remixing and creating images inspired by their heritage. As a reaction to the bland souvenir art that is widely available at airports and tourist shops, these artists are using the same visual language of their ancestors to create a commentary on contemporary Asian culture and society. http://www.kult.com.sg/magazine/

Regal Discomforts

2011-09-07T18:51:00.097+08:00

Regal Discomforts

August 31-Sept 21, 2011

My solo show at Blanc Compound

photos by Pol Sena

http://statusmagonline.com/dina-gadia-regal-discomforts

No Extra Movements acrylic on canvas 2011

The Natives are Restless (Violator Vixxxen) collage 2011

The Natives are Restless (Mondo Bizzaro) collage 2011

The Natives are Restless (Generation Degenerates) collage 2011

The Great Trendkill Display acrylic on canvas 2011

Sophisticated Togetherness acrylic on canvas 2011

Yr. Juggernaut/Colossal Pose acrylic on canvas 2011

The Natives are Restless (Abominable Neighborhood) collage 2011

The Natives are Restless (Body Beautiful) collage 2011

The Natives are Restless (Savage Barrio) collage 2011

Dum-dum Fury acrylic on canvas 2011

2011-07-22T17:07:00.001+08:00

Hellraiser 2011

foam, synthetic leather, nailback bottons

For Hats On, Bottoms Off show at Blanc Compound.

Photo from daily design dosage.

Point of no return

2011-06-30T23:49:00.002+08:00

Point of No Return, 2011

My work for On the Radar: 6 New Symptoms curated by Gary-Ross Pastrana

June 29-July 30, 2011 at SLab

http://slab.silverlensphoto.com/slab/newsletter.php?date=2011-6

Just Flesh

2010-12-18T17:19:00.006+08:00

Works for 12x9 show at West Gallery. December 8 - December 31, 2010.

West Gallery is at 48 West Avenue, Quezon City.

M.B.D. (Must Be Destroyed) collage 2010

Yr. Man/Just Flesh collage 2010

2010-11-19T16:31:00.009+08:00

Dina Gadia "Selfdestructo"

Acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 inches

2010

CONTRA-AFFAIR

2010-08-28T01:54:00.029+08:00

Words: Bea Davila
Dina Gadia presents a solo show in 20SQUARE called Contra-Affair. Known for her collages, Gadia enjoys mixing pop art rock and roll inspired images, and putting them together to create an entirely new context.

In Contra-Affair, Gadia uses three mediums: painting,collage and sculpture to explore “affairs of ideas/images that go against each other”—from a muscle man in a graveyard to a children’s textbook illustration with punk graphics.

She likens her mix and match of images to dating. “If the images seem like their playfully flirting with one another, at the same time, ‘never trusting and committing’, then I'll make them stick together.” The resulting affair between contrasts or ironies becomes something else entirely. For example, by adding the text “mamaw” (monster) into the muscle man-graveyard mix, the transformation from man to beast becomes complete. In each new “affair”, she purchases a new identity for the images by defining the images against each other.

Because Gadia “cracks the images to open the possibilities of new meaning”, her work is witty, often times in your face, but always thought-provoking. Will the contra-affair work? Or, will it be over before it starts? Like Gadia, one can only guess how long the affair will last and challenge the expected.

Contra-Affair by Dina Gadia 20Square, SLab.

Opening reception September 1, 2010 6-9pm

Contra-Affair opens simultaneously with Divides by Rhett Eala in Silverlens; and An Hour in a Glass Balloon by Chati Coronel at SLab.

Show will run till September 25.

http://slab.silverlensphoto.com/slab/newsletter.php?date=2010-8

photos courtesy of Silverlens

Mamaw collage 2010

Sensations in Tandem collage 2010

Snake Bite Love collage 2010

The Big Chameleon Moment acrylic on canvas 2010

Spectacle Plastic Devices resin 2010

Them Bones

2010-08-28T01:13:00.004+08:00

Collage work for His and Hers group show at Blanc Compound, 359 Shaw Blvd. Photos by Eric David. (Because I forgot to scan the 'papers'!)

Mother Love Bones collage 2010

Gruesome Twosome collage 2010

Frankenstein Remix collage 2010

Late post, Siren's Hall

2010-08-27T20:35:00.106+08:00

Some of my works for the show Siren's Hall
Siren's Hall opened last June 5, 2010. Organized by Mariano Ching.
Links: http://www.gmanews.tv/story/194003/fill-up-your-senses-at-sirens-hall
http://www.mo-space.net/

Born in the USA collage 2010

Blooming Hits collage 2010

Dream with Dean collage 2010

Let it Bleed collage 2010

This Charming Man collage 2010

Thriller collage 2010

The Mothers of Invention collage 2010

Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast collage 2010

Abbey Road collage 2010

Siren's Hall exhibit invite

Visual arts and Music have always had a particular link. What with all the music one needs to listen to while making art, to the reference artists have been making in their art works from Mondrian’s Boogie Woogie Broadway to Bencab’s rockstar portraits to all the art bands that have cropped up from art schools to all the noise and fury sound art makes.

Siren’s Hall came up as a way to tie up music and art together not as cover art to a band’s album but as a separate project that talks about music in a visual way whether it be a visual artist collaborating with a musician, or musicians using visual art to convey music , or visual artists using sound and music to make their projects. The people invited to the show are usually involved in the arts. It is a celebration of the ongoing love the visual art has for music and a way to engage in experimentation and play.

Puff!

2010-07-07T00:39:00.019+08:00

How Does That Grab You Darling

Dina Gadia April 16-May 8, 2010

Blanc Gallery, Makati City

Art from the age of mechanical reproduction by Angelo Suarez

Taking its cue from pulp illustrations & B-movie posters, Dina Gadia’s latest solo exhibition How Does That Grab You Darling explores via acrylic on canvas the gap between what Walter Benjamin calls the cult value & the exhibition value of art, w/ a particular interest in the cult aspect of cult movies. Obliquely, thru her manual re-execution of images to have previously been mechanically reproduced, & also by her re-staging of them in a gallery context instead of the magazine & CD-cover environments they have been grabbed from, the show manages to raise the question, “Does mechanical reproduction really render the masses it supposedly privileges more visible, or does it only further abstract them & their labor?”

Suspicious of Benjamin’s optimistic valuation of mechanical reproduction, Ranciere argues instead that “it is because the anonymous became the subject matter of art that the act of recording such a subject matter can be an art,” such that the artfulness of photography stems not so much from its technology but from what its technology has been in aid of: the narrativization & framing—the making visible—of the common. While it is true that there is nothing common about the woman in “Where the Action is Hotter”—Gadia herself in her artist’s statement calls attention to the pricelessness, the uncommon quality, of this woman’s facial expression oscillating ambiguously between pleasure & pain, typical of carsploitation & sexploitation action-movie posters—what has become common, in fact, is the very framing of such a pose, the perverse ubiquity of such an image. Not the woman per se but the depiction of the woman: this is what Gadia chooses to at once depict & critique.

That her work strays from the modernist impulse to revel in & exploit the properties of medium (in the case of painting, the plasticity of paint, its texture given certain conditions) makes absolute sense. One notices upon encountering Gadia’s work in situ that there is no need to encounter the work in situ, that experiencing the exhibition via, say, documentation photographs of it on somebody else’s insipid art blog elicits the same amount of pleasure as entering the physical space of the gallery to examine each of her canvases. Despite her manual execution of the paintings, they may as well not have been manually executed: one can appreciate equally in “Dynamite Cliché” the multiplicity of spread legs be it on the spread of a glossy magazine, a tarpaulin banner spread between electric poles, or on canvas spread over a wooden frame. Intended to be an analog to what Gadia refers to in her statement as the “explosion of many film franchises” such as X-Men,Once Upon a Time in China, or even Mano Po, this multiplicity, in the spirit of the above, seems more like an analog to the plethora of platforms such franchises find themselves comfortably situated in: Not just film but comicbook, theater adaptation thence its musicale edition, TV mini-series, video game, action figure, plush doll, Happy Meal freebie, cereal surprise, a nauseating serial surplus.

The easier critical route is to condemn such seemingly glib executions of flatness as a flaw—who, after all, can resist the seduction of site- & medium-specific artworks (work A can work only w/in the space of gallery X, work B makes sense only in park Y, work C yields proper signification only in slum Z, ad nauseam) as pushed for by modernist singularity?—where the agency of the human hand is immobilized by the fetters of representation. But one also cannot overlook the fact that the decision to still manually execute the work despite the seeming irrelevance of manual execution is deliberate: Far from being a sterile display of craftsmanship (really, of what use to anyone is the display of mimetic skill?),How Does That Grab You Darling problematizes the potentially positive inescapability of the original whose agency has been seemingly downplayed, what w/ the sophisticated contemporary privileging of concept that authorizes artists to hire craftsmen or laborers who can do the physical work for them (“What matters is this is my idea: whether I built it or not is beside the point”). Relevance shifts from the question “How well does this particular artwork maximize its medium?” (exhibition value) towards “How sure can one be that this particular artwork has been executed by Gadia herself?” (cult value).

No wonder that besides the paintings themselves, posters that have been mechanically produced, signed, & numbered are also made available for sale—there are, in fact, more posters than paintings, the former being much more modestly priced than the latter—in order to tease out the possible falsity of what Ranciere refers to as “the promotion of the anonymous” committed by the mechanical arts. The exhibition rightly & courageously raises the question: Are mechanical reproduction & its accompanying creative strategies of intellectual theft & appropriation only tolerated because they are normalized & stripped of agency by the art economy it supposedly subverts?

For Benjamin, this is exactly what constitutes the cult value of art, wherein “[o]ne may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view,” such that it is enough that the audience believes How Does That Grab You Darling is indeed Gadia’s work. Issues of authenticity & ethics come into play: Can one even be sure that the exhibited works are of Gadia’s doing; is it possible that she is merely passing off somebody else’s work as her own? Consequently: Is there anything wrong w/ passing off somebody else’s work as one’s own, anyway? But perhaps “ethics” is not the right word here; in implicating the cult value of art, the issues raised may more appropriately be those of faith instead, the artist gesturing toward the restoration of the much maligned “theology of art” (its doomed, dilapidated doctrine—art for art’s sake—derided & pillaged by progressives proud w/ purpose & high from their moral high ground) whose contemporary incarnation is that of the secular cult of beauty.

The artist, hence, works not so much w/ collages but w/ the idea of collages, making humorous juxtapositions of readymade images minus the method of cutting them out & splicing them against each other. Instead, she paints the image all over again—or at least there is the impression that she does—as if the collage were a single layer of picture, such that the collage’s own concession of pictorial flatness is itself flattened even further, hiding its own seams & concealing points of post & paste. Is it possible that this flatness is analogous to how consumer culture—the market toward w/c such images have been originally directed, the darlings intended to be grabbed or, more appropriately,interpellated (to use Althusser’s term) by the proliferation of such images—can now be described, flat in its banality?

Gadia’s work is no longer simply in the age of mechanical reproduction but from the age of mechanical reproduction: Now past the naïve idealization that “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual” (Benjamin), the artist allows space for concession that mechanical reproduction, having become the choice mode of production of today’s consumer culture, has in no way allowed art to be practiced & appreciated democratically (wasn’t the democracy of artistic practice—the myth that anyone can be an artist—the great promise of mechanical reproduction in the 1st place?) but has instead opened it up to the perils of systematic subsumption under the highly exclusionary structure of capitalism: Because one needs resources—because one needs capital (art education, gallery connexions, membership in a feudalistic circle of art-system insiders, etc.)—for any engagement w/ art in such a paradigm, art is thus not for everyone, & not everyone can be an artist. As the painting “Golden Adventures and Foul Horror” spells out so loudly, artworks are “CHEAP THRILLS” the way one’s brand of toothpaste is a cheap thrill, the way one’s mass-manufactured pair of pants is a cheap thrill: it is only cheap insofar as one can afford it.

We have been fooled by the false promise of mechanical reproduction: the revelation thru demystification & the underscoring of this fact is the exhibition’s forward-thinking triumph. “The instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics,” muses Benjamin. But the fact is: the dissolution of authenticity’s applicability to artistic production has only effectively fetishized it, has only further ritualized & reified authenticity. For all the hope it has brought regarding the myriad possibilities of appropriation, for all the optimism it has wrought about the (copyright-)free exchange of ideas, mechanical reproduction still boils down to the crass reality of branding, it still boils down to who controls the forces of re/production, the sultry, industry-savvy entrepreneur who, as if bikini-clad, seductively invites one to “Walk Among Us” while fiercely holding the reins of the tigers of artistic commerce: the origin of appropriated picture X or of lifted text Y may not matter—intellectual & creative theft, after all, is the hallmark of collage—for as long as one does not forget that what truly matters is that this collage is a Dina Gadia original, that this collage is sold to consumers at a reasonable price exclusively at Blanc Gallery. Now, all How Does That Grab You Darlingneeds to be perfect is a jingle.

Special thanks to Allan Balisi, Jay Amante, Blanc Gallery, Angelo Suarez, and Tito Mel of 4D.

Posters

2010-04-01T01:24:00.018+08:00

Silkscreen posters for my show How Does That Grab You Darling

size: 19 x 14 inches

2 colors (black and white on bright orange, blue, green and brown paper)
each design is limited to 15 prints only
signed and numbered

How Does That Grab You Darling

2010-03-20T11:32:00.023+08:00

Art from the age of mechanical reproduction:

Dina Gadia’s How Does That Grab You Darling

Taking its cue from pulp illustrations and B-movie posters, Dina Gadia’s latest solo exhibition How Does That Grab You Darling explores via acrylic on canvas the gap between what Walter Benjamin calls the cult value and the exhibition value of art, putting special emphasis on the cult aspect of cult movies. Obliquely, through her manual re-execution of images to have previously been mechanically reproduced, and also by her re-staging of them in a gallery context instead of the magazine and CD-cover environments they have been salvaged from, the show manages to raise the question: Does mechanical reproduction really render the masses it supposedly privileges more visible, or does it only further abstract them and their labor?

Working not so much with collages but with the idea of collages, Gadia makes humorous juxtapositions of readymade images minus the method of cutting them out and splicing them against each other. Instead, she paints the image all over again as if the collage were a single layer of picture, such that the collage’s own concession of pictorial flatness is itself flattened even further, hiding its own seams and concealing points of post and paste. Is it possible that this flatness is analogous to how consumer culture—the market toward which such images have been originally directed, the darlings intended to be grabbed or, more appropriately, hailed (to use Althusser’s term) by the proliferation of such images—can now be described, flat in its banality?

Dina Gadia’s How Does that Grab You Darling opens on April 16 at Blanc Gallery, 2E Crown Tower, H.V. De la Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati. The show will run till May 8.

Kill Godhead Style

2010-03-09T17:50:00.006+08:00

Some of my collages for Paper Panic! - two-man show with Mark Salvatus at 20Square.

Paper Panic review by Ren Aguila here.

Kamandag 7.25 x 10.25 inches collage 2009

Radical Adult Kill Godhead Style 7.25 x 10.25 inches collage 2009

Catch 10.25 x 14.50 inches collage 2009

Bordello de Luxe 10.25 x 14.50 inches collage 2009

Vulgar Display

2010-03-09T17:32:00.111+08:00

Some of my collages for the show Tears, Cuts and Ruptures: A Philippine Collage Review

organized by Gary-Ross Pastrana

September 16 - October 17, 2009 SLab, Silverlens Gallery.

Bird Bath 8x10 inches collage 2009

Dead Dick 8x10 inches collage 2009

This Land is Mine II 8x10 inches collage 2009

Empire Inventions 8x10 inches collage 2009

Transmission 8x10 inches collage 2009

Vulgar Display of Power 8x10 inches collage 2009

2010-03-09T17:22:00.007+08:00

Super Ultra Cool Pink Pussy Mask

Dina Gadia 24 x 24 inches Acrylic on canvas 2010

Confusion is love

2010-03-08T17:15:00.006+08:00

My works for Saturday Fun Machine at the Video Room, Finale Art File.
Organized by Mariano Ching.

Love Lucifer 18x24 inches acrylic on canvas 2009

Confusion is Next 18x24 inches acrylic on canvas 2009

PAPER PANIC!

2010-01-05T15:18:00.021+08:00

RECONSTRUCTING

| by Bea Davila

In Paper Panic, Dina Gadia and Mark Salvatus cut, cover, and change to create and reveal. Drawing from their advertising background, Gadia and Salvatus juxtapose random images with pop culture, archiving, urban culture and ephemera. Paper Panic -collages,drawings, cut-outs etc.- tweak the familiar and everyday, and the expected and the fleeting, to tell a different story. Salvatus invites us to imagine ‘what was’ and question ‘what is and is not’; Gadia tells us of ‘the way things are’, encouraging us to laugh along. Paper Panic engages us in dialogue as it exposes the colors of life. Paper Panic at 20Square, SLab Jan 13 - Feb 13, 2009.

http://www.silverlensphoto.com/newsletter.php?id=146

Also Visit: The Swank Style!

Two Ways by Mark Salvatus

Wig Murders

2009-12-11T12:46:00.083+08:00

Wig Murders by Dina Gadia acrylic on canvas (diptych) 2010

My work for the show Happily Unhappy curated by Louie Cordero and Jordin Isip.

Happily Unhappy

January 9-30, 2010

Blanc Compound

359 Shaw Boulevard Interior Addition Hills Mandaluyong City Philippines
For more information, please call or sms 752-0032/ 0920-9276436, email: info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph

Saturday Fun Machine at Finale Art File (Video Room)

2009-12-09T16:46:00.030+08:00

Saturday Fun Machine was a run of cartoon and cartoon related shows on Saturday during the 80’s. This was the time before Disney Channel and Cartoon Network, Internet and DVD’s. This was a much awaited day for a generation of children as this was the only time that shows geared for this age group was shown the whole morning. Saturday was also the time to peruse our comics from Archie to Zuma and for a generation of youth that would grow up to be visual artists, it was a time to draw and dream. This exhibit features artists that grew up in that generation and the generations that came after it that were greatly influenced by comics and cartoons in their art making process.

Artists:
Allan Balisi, Tim Brown, Vic Balanon, Mariano Ching, Louie Cordero, Dina Gadia,
Eugene Jarque, Robert Langenegger , Romeo Lee, Kat Medina, Yasmin Sison, and Haraya Ching
Curated by Mariano Ching

December 8-31 2009
Finale Art File Warehouse 17 Video Room
La Fuerza Compound (Gate 1) 2241 Pasong Tamo, Makati City

Cinema of Fear 0.2

2009-11-02T19:30:00.008+08:00

A Cry of Terror, A Honeymoon Scream I acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2009

A Cry of Terror, A Honeymoon Scream II acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2009

Tears, Cuts and Ruptures: A Philippine Collage Review

2009-09-08T17:25:00.015+08:00

http://slab.silverlensphoto.com/slab/newsletter.php

TEARS, CUTS & RUPTURES: A PHILIPPINE COLLAGE REVIEW by Roberto Chabet, Jed Escueta, Dina Gadia, Nilo ilarde, Kaloy Olavides, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Kreskin Sugay, Gerardo Tan, Wire Tuazon, Poklong Anading & MM Yu, SLab, September 16, WED, 6-9PM

Tears, Cuts & Ruptures: A Philippine Collage Review

By Cocoy Lumbao

Tears, Cuts & Ruptures brings to light the development of contemporary collage in the Philippines as it gathers eleven artists, Jed Escueta, Dina Gadia, Kaloy Olavides, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Kreskin Sugay, Gerardo Tan, Nilo Ilarde, Wire Tuazon, Poklong Anading and MM Yu, showing diverse works that demonstrate the many forms modern collage has gone through since Roberto Chabet’s early exhibitions during the mid-seventies. Rooted from this lineage of Formal, Conceptual, Dadaist and Pop sensibilities, the eleven artists reveal its transmutations into forms brought upon by present-day art practices, bestowing their works with images gathered from popular culture, comic books, media and photography. As a technique invariably taking the backseat from painting and the rest of the molded, collage in this exhibition undergoes close watch in an attempt to realize a modest history of its own. It seeks to unfold a growing relevance to current art practices and to secure a significant frame within it can place all its pieces to determine where it stands among the rest of contemporary art in the Philippines.

Image: Roberto Chabet, The Boat Pit, 1987

Tears, Cuts & Ruptures opens at 6 pm in SLab September 16 and runs until the October 17, 2009. As a related gallery event, they will be having a musical evening called HAIL PRIMITIVE ROCK AND ROLL! (A Collage of the dumb, easy, noisy (anti?) music that killed King Beethoven) featuring The Sleepyheads! On September 23, 2009 from 6-9pm at SLab. Snippets of recognizable chords, riffs, shouts, thumps and guitar noises that ended the reign of serious music(Beethoven) and ushered the era of anybody-can-do-it Rock and Roll music!

For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816-0044, 0905-2650873, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am–7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com.

pottymouth

2009-09-06T21:16:00.010+08:00

Dina Gadia and Kat Medina

Pottymouth (a two-man show) at Blanc Art Space

September 21, 2009

2E Crown Tower 107 H.V. dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati City

CHIPS SKATEDECK with Pilipinas Street Plan

2009-06-30T19:30:00.013+08:00

CHIPS SKATEDECK ART EXHIBIT at Rafa's Deli Cafe Unit C 10 Xavierville Ave, Loyola Heights, Quezon City on July 4, 2009 7pm with Boy Agimat Okto Ungga Nemo Krayolaeater Whooop Egg Ngok Fabo Neil Arvin Javier exLD Kdrgn Graver Darko Benz Nuno Rest Piss DHD Nill Worm Chi Chill Melancholy WeAreAnalog K.O. Allan Balisi Dina Gadia Darrel Balesteros Pol Sena Bonz Peek Epjey SDFK Ekis Ferdz Valencia PBC Wes Valenzuela Deformindustry Ode Datu Juan234

with performances by:

PINK COW TETHER BAD OMEN GO SIGNALS FLICKER FUSION FAULTLINE GATECRASH WITH NADIA

check out PILIPINAS STREET PLAN's site!

Cinema of Fear 0.1

2009-06-28T17:41:00.009+08:00

New works for a group show at Studio 83 organized by Blanc Gallery.

Attack of the Killer Wave Acrylic on Canvas 48 x 48 inches 2009

A Fear to Remember Acrylic on Canvas 48 x 48 inches 2009

Doll Hauls

2009-06-19T02:22:00.009+08:00

Scored from this year's Toy Convention at the Megamall. They look a little weird and creepy for some reason, maybe because it's a bit old (1997/98 from Toy Biz), but I still like it.

Black Widow 1998 Marvel Toy Biz Inc.

Invisible Woman 1997 Marvel Toy Biz Inc.

Dark Phoenix 1997 Marvel Toy Biz Inc.

Julian Schnabel Art Show in Manila

2009-06-15T02:33:00.011+08:00

Got the chance to see Julian Schnabel's "Recent Works" at Manila Contemporary last June 12. “Recent Works” consists of three series of paintings as well as diverse series of prints. Amazing works! Show's until July 6.

MORE INFO HERE

MONKEY on a tricycle

2009-06-07T04:33:00.008+08:00

New stuff Allan and I scored from a thrift shop. Real awesome wind-up biking tin monkey! The propeller on its head actually turns while the monkey bikes around. A bit pricy but considering its good condition, we haven't had second thoughts about buying it.

Super Bitch

2009-06-04T15:53:00.008+08:00

Exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Bulwagang Juan Luna for KASIBULAN PasyonNasyon 20th anniversary

Super Bitch Acrylic on canvas and paper 17 x 22 cm and 36 x 48 inches 2009

ULTRA PLASTIC STYLE NOW! -Exhibition Notes-

2009-05-10T02:34:00.013+08:00

Dina Gadia’s Ultra Plastic Style Now!

Cuteness & Cancer by Angelo Suarez

If there is anything more dangerous than the Beautiful, it is the Cute: Since Delilah & Helen, we have grown wary of the impending atrocity associated w/ beauty: If not intentional beheading, the unintentional beginning of a war. But not grown weary, as it remains a concern constantly resuscitated if only to be stabbed at once again: Almost as if beauty itself were parting its luscious lips for the faintest of whispers: Kill me, but kill me softly—tenderly—w/ cuteness.

Beware of the Look that Kills Acrylic on canvas 122x122 cm 2009

Such that actress Gene Tierney’s face—once an icon of beauty—becomes an icon of death, substituting for the skull in the sigil of crossbones. But it is not so much a substitute as a prosthesis: The face has been so embedded into the sigil that one can no longer say it’s a superimposed image upon another image. They are one & the same, their union hermetically sealed by the painting’s kitschy title, “Beware of the Look that Kills,” as if to evoke the vibe of early ‘90s B-movies w/ knife-wielding lookers for assassins—only to appropriate it for the 1944 film Laura, from whose poster the Tierney portrait is lifted.

But Tierney in Laura isn’t your archetypal woman-of-the-‘90s femme fatale. Despite being decades early, the film portrays a sinisterly advanced variation of the archetype—that of the semiurge as advertising director, manipulator of signs & the production of meaning, propagator of the Image in lieu of what images stand for. Better yet stood for, given now the primacy of signifier over signified, when once upon a time it was the signifier that was believed to be secondary, merely the vehicle for & instrument of meaning: Where the image of the dead (skull) can no longer signify death, why not use an image of life instead? The sharpness of this reversal is made blunt by the title—blunt in the sense that it has become at once dull (i.e., the blunt side of a knife) & more overt (i.e., one giving his/her comments bluntly). But blunt is not necessarily less fatal; in its kitschy-cute reference to the accidental comedy of B-movies, the word “kill” brings back a notion of violence into the crossbones, but a sugarcoated violence: a clump of cotton candy, at whose core is a knife—

or a bullet. A bullet at the heart of the banana. For it is a heartless banana, in the end: In “Kill yr. Idols,” the fruit is as ruthless as a gun, poses the same danger, the former a prosthesis for the latter. One wonders: If in the dystopian dream of half-robot/half-human perfection, flesh is part-by-part replaced by machine in the cyborg’s body, would machine being replaced by fleshly fruit instead be an ironic gesture?

Kill yr. Idols Acrylic on canvas 153x153 cm 2009

There is the immediate temptation to say yes, but to do so is to ignore that a handgun is nominally the same as a small, sweet banana: a señorita. While initially the painting seems to evoke physical violence (or, more importantly, its absence), the kind of violence it more appropriately evokes—in fact, inflicts—is semiotic, epistemic: What “Kill yr. Idols” kills as an image is the notion of the full image itself, of embodied meaning: More than the Velvet Underground (w/c was the inspiration for the Warholian banana), & more than Fritz Lang (from whose 1928 film Spione the depicted hand is lifted), it’s the very notion of the idol as icon that is murdered. For irony to exist, there must also exist the presumption that the gun & the banana cannot simply be interchanged, for each has its own meaning; & irony is in the very reversal of things that cannot be interchanged. But here, the banana is an equally fatal weapon as the gun, if not more fatal because prosthetic: the exchange is total—& iconoclasm is never as brutal as when it is total.

Brutality thru cuteness: One cannot fight back if the aggressor is a darling. How dare one bemoan the desire for material objects when what gives this desire its body is a child? Or—even worse—does mourning acquire new heights of intensity upon realizing that this desire is inextricable from childhood? This is the ambiguity inherent in the painting “Most Girls”: Right from the very title, one expects a generalization to take place—but what? There is the hesitation to pass judgment on such cute little girls, their innocence accented by a playful cat, by the dominant colorlessness waiting to be tarnished. By the time attention is finally called to the blemish of flowers & prismatic colors—to the desire for physical beauty (conjured by the former) & wealth (conjured by the latter in its evocation of diamonds)—one no longer knows what it means.

Most Girls Acrylic on canvas 122x153 cm 2009

No accident here that Gadia hints at materiality, again in the spirit of play of signifiers: Besides gain (beauty, wealth), materiality also deals w/ physical-ness, the signifier’s object-ness as signifier, as plastic object: Before a prism evokes a diamond, it is first & foremost a prism, at once self- & non-referential. Must “most girls” after all embody desire for wealth & beauty, or is this association a mere stereotype made possible thru ages of cultural accretion? On the one hand, these children could simply enjoy color & flowers. On the other hand, there could be no children at all—just colors & flowers shaped like children. They don’t even have to be flowers at all: just colors made to look like flowers: All surface & no depth: Baudrillardian simulation: All plastic.

Ultra Plastic Style Now! Ultra Plastic Style Now! Ultra Plastic Style Now!

All Outta Angst Acrylic on canvas 122x122 cm 2009

No explosion of meanings but implosion: Where things mean nothing, things mean everything. The more an image stays still, in stasis, the wilder its movement becomes—the more it metastasizes. In “All Outta Angst,” the wolf means anger, the wolf means respect, the wolf means leader, the wolf means enemy, anger means madness, madness means insanity, leader means dictator, dictator means oppressor, enemy means other, other means partner, partner means spouse—the chain of simulacra extends infinitely, proliferating its own cancer cells: The wolf feminized by flowers, each flower masculinized by the wolf, all of them feeding off each other.

SNAFU Acrylic on canvas 155x244 cm 2009

Welcome to total prostheticization. “SNAFU.” Military shorthand for “Situation Normal, All Fucked Up,” as if the normal were filled w/ atrocity. Again, one would think this to be ironic—but it’s not. What we perceive as natural is also simultaneously naturalized, that is, imposed upon us. Camouflage: a device for hiding: a prosthesis. What Gadia had intended to be a painting of a mountain went awry, for w/c blotches of paint were added as a cover-up. If only to extend the cover-up, the work turns into a diptych—& it is the camouflage diptych we see, we appreciate as artwork, not the intended mountain.

No one cares if the mountain was a mistake. Everything could be wrong & still we could swallow it: We can take the world’s cancers, for as all long as they’re all cute. (You can always make a new rabbit—a new prosthesis—if you don’t like this one.)

Don't Worry Darling I'll Make You Another Rabbit

Acrylic on canvas 122x183 cm 2009

For more info visit hiraya.com

Dina Gadia on multiply

Ultra Opening

2009-05-05T03:24:00.009+08:00

Here are some photos from my opening exhibit, Ultra Plastic Style Now!, last Thursday, April 30 at Hiraya Gallery. Wanted to post all the pictures I have but it's a bit difficult placing images in blogspot. Will be posting in Multiply instead. Thanks to all those who came, supported and visited the show. :) Peace! And yes, the walls are red.

ULTRA PLASTIC STYLE NOW!

2009-04-27T23:04:00.012+08:00

ULTRA PLASTIC STYLE NOW! April 30, 2009 at Hiraya Gallery 6pm, Thursday.

Few more days to go before my first solo show.

For more info visit hiraya.com

Real Dirty Rabbit

2009-04-08T06:18:00.011+08:00

Took some photos of my favorite bunny mixing plate. Leftovers in different colors.

ULTRA PLASTIC STYLE NOW!

2009-03-28T17:40:00.010+08:00

Dina Gadia's first solo exhibit at Hiraya Gallery

April 30, 2009 6pm-9pm 530 United Nations Avenue, Ermita Manila

ULTRA PLASTIC STYLE NOW!

hiraya.com

happyaccidents.multiply.com

F+art Attack

2008-10-14T14:40:00.005+08:00

Some works from Four Corners at F+ART Gallery with Ms Mimi Tecson, Viva and Happy Andrada (2007)

www.happyaccidents.multiply.com

Liberty Bonding

2008-10-14T13:59:00.013+08:00

Amor Solo, Amores Muchos

MACHINE 6. The diptych "Liberty Bonding" by Dina Gadia unveils a different aspect of the AM. Once accused by critics of having overly commercialized his art, the AM too had done his share of commissioned work, such as posters advertising liberty bonds. It is this practical yet classical artist Gadia 'bonds' with — Amorsolo the adman — whose work not only involved aesthetically depicting the banal, but also banalizing the idea of depiction while simultaneously aestheticizing the banal.

Eleven artists work together to rediscover a machine each of them hardly knows, admittedly. But they end up doing more than simply rediscovering: they reconstruct him, each creating his/her own Amorsolo towards an ever-growing set of Amores Muchos. This is an invitation extended to every Filipino — that we look again this August at Amorsolo's works. Not to celebrate his genius by simply remembering him — his genius is irrelevant here — but by constructing him over and over again.

To each his own Amor Solo.

http://www.hiraya.com/exhibits/amorsolo

"Liberty Bonding" 4x6 ft. Acrylic on Canvas 2008

Sonic Painting

2008-10-14T13:31:00.008+08:00

Some works from Out Two Tow Wot Exhibit w/ Kat Medina @ Big Sky Mind, 2008

Chunky Pieces of Paper

2008-10-14T12:00:00.004+08:00

Some works yr. 2006 Strange Things and Other Life Forms with Allan Balisi at Chunky Far Flung Gallery, Cubao X