SPACES

group exhibit featuring works of Alexis Marga, Andrew Tan, Cheryl Owen, Edmond Rivera and Froilan Calayag

At a time where we are forced to examine our relationships to spaces – whether interior or exterior, real or imaginary – one wonders, what does it mean to take up space? For the artist, the idea of space operates on multiple levels. On the formal, the artist designs space in the physical sense, creating seemingly tangible realms that can feel lived in and familiar. On another level, space is rendered as a concept: a safe space for recollection and expression.

In “Spaces,” five artists tap into the innate compulsion to occupy space. In Cheryl Owen’s works, space is evoked in both the literal and spiritual sense. Her paintings, brimming with fauna, recall her own experiences as a hiker and her belief that in nature, we find the most sacred shared space of all. Through a series of delicate vignettes, Alexis Marga reflects on cyclical themes of growth, life, rebirth, and death, and their ability to transcend beyond the borders of her own constructed narratives.

For Edmond Rivera, space could not be more direct. Centering his works on the hapag kainan, he illustrates the communal experience of space and its impact on the family during the time of a pandemic. Froilan Calayag and Andrew Tan’s distinct styles become musings on the imaginative potential of space, where creatures and characters of any kind can roam, or just merely exist.

In simply taking up space, the artist is also effectively creating new spaces. Ones where viewers can contemplate on the spaces they exist within and the ones they have yet to explore – the symbolic blank canvases where anything can happen.

- Mara Fabella