Are you ready for Ortigas Art Festival 2020? From February 28 - March 8, we will be showcasing artworks from galleries, international artists and groups, with the exhibition being designed by Mr. Renato Habulan.

Join us for a month-long celebration of the arts with demos and workshops. More details will be announced soon so stay tuned!

#OrtigasArtFestival2020 #EscapeAtEstancia

100 years is 100 years. Perhaps the greatest gift of history to mankind is the legacy. Komiks or comics has been part of the society. Visually it has created an infinite stream of imagination, historically it has been somewhat a medium in conveying ideology and belief to others.

Comics or Komiks in Filipino language has been one of the tools produced in the Philippines to provide entertainment. Also this is one way of showcasing the talents of many Filipino.

Francisco V. Coching, the recognized National Artist for Visual Arts, is just one of the many artist who has proven that Filipinos are very much talented. His works became an icon in the comic book industry. Thus, gaining the title King of Komiks.

The comic books created by Francisco V. Coching are of high and original value. Creations, even though most of them are in black and white it showcased a beautifully executed lines and curves of every character presented. From the human figure up to the details of its background and surroundings.

Just recently, the National Commission for Culture and Arts and SM Aura opened their tribute exhibit to the national artist. Displaying FV Coching's published artworks (which is the Komiks) together with some drafts that he created before.  These are all original artworks, Unang Labas komiks spreads, and life-size reproductions of his most popular characters and works. It also showcased sone of the works which was life life through movie, though some of which are still in black and white. I know some of these because films because I once was able to watch some of those tagalog movies.

When the time of self preservation after the war, Komiks became a medium that helped in flourishing the use of Filipino language. No wonder why FV Coching was hailed as the national artist.

Some of the famous Komiks stories are ......

The exhibit will run until February 24, 2019. So if you want to relive your love for komiks or would love to enjoy classic komik stories created by FV Coching just visit the Francisco V. Coching's Centennnial Exhibit at the Upper Ground Floor Atrium, SM Aura Premier. This exhibit is free and open to all.

#FVChong #FVCoching100 #FVCochingatSMAura #ArtsinAura

For some of the art enthusiasts, it's another inspiring day to visit a gallery. This coming Independence Day weekend, the first ÄRT MÖD Fair 2017 will be opening its doors for the public, most particularly to art enthusiasts and critics. Starting this Friday, June 9,  until June 11, 2017, from 10 AM - 7 PM doors are open at the Megatrade Hall 2, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City.

Envisioned to bring the world of Philippine Modern Art to a wider audience, ÄRT MÖD Fair 2017 gathers a host of both established and upcoming visual artists like Philipp Badon, Boysie Villavicencio, Ali Alejandro, Joe Datuin, Toym Imao, Michelline Syjuco, Ronnie Lim, Andy Malluche, Luna Arguelles, Alfred Gallura, Elaine Herbosa, Miguel Buhay, Pilar Quiros, JV Calanoc, Noemi Concepcion, Sky de Leon, Ralph William Villaluz, Emmanuel Mendoza, Allan Sison, Norlie Meimban, Maia Magpantay with the collections of William Borja and Myla Roque and participating galleries like Larc En Ciel; Arte Pintura; Transwing; Happy Art; Saturday Group headed by Buds Convocar; FDAP and FEATI University together under one roof.

ÄRT MÖD Fair 2017 provides art enthusiasts, students, mall shoppers and the general public a convenient and comfortable venue to experience and appreciate modern art like paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, mixed media and digital art. A rare opportunity for serious collectors and first time buyers alike to find the artwork that match their styles and tastes.

Visitors are treated to a variety of activities during this 3-day event that inspires creativity and spurs understanding of art and its processes. Listen and learn through talks by renowned artists like Inka Madera, Liz Lanuzo, John Paul “Lakan” Oliveros and Toym Imao, as they convey priceless insight and new ideas in their fields. Take part in various demos; drawing and painting sessions; and learn Nude Sketching from professionals.

ÄRT MÖD Fair 2017 is produced and organized by ArtisteSpace with the invaluable support of its major sponsor, SM Megamall, and media partners, When In Manila, Art+ Magazine, Fringe Magazine, and prominent influencers of the blogosphere.

One of my dreams was to be an architect, unfortunately, there are other things that was plan ahead of me and finances is the number factor that hinders it. Arts, architectural designs, and sculptures interests me. I would really spend a few minutes looking at any exhibit. I think the artistic genes of my ancestors flows through my veins. Anyway so much with my unchecked part of my bucketlist.

I think if I were to be an architect or a designer I will create a mixed of aesthetic and functionality. The reason that I thought about it is that even though I'm no graduate of architecture or any design schools, my love for arts and how I value God creation is there. So, I would probably a radical and functional designer.
 
Just recently SM North EDSA through their Interior Zone and with partnership with FAME Manila they created an event featuring today's generation of young designers and their work that hits the global market. Few of these young designers were winners of the Red Box Design Program conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry and Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM). The aim of these agencies was to nurture and showcase the talents of the next generation of Filipino designers. Some of these young designers were featured in one of London's prestigious Fashion Showcase.  

Some of the young designers who by chance became famous because their creations were Micki Olaguer, Viktoria Laguyo and Jim Torres. During the event at the event "Home Is Where the Art Is" these young designers shared their experiences and their journey completing their creations. It was great that Filipinos are having names in the industry of designs and fashion.

My only thought about this is that perhaps the country should embark more in cultivating the talents and creativity of the younger generation. More of Filipino first notion!
The exhibit of these young designers creations will run until March 24, 2017. You'll have a chance to check it out and see for yourself. If your haven is the look at designs like these, be there!

Kwento Ni Toto shares an upcoming play in the metro read the details below.

What happens when a young gay man falls in love with a woman? That’s the central conceit behind Red Turnip Theater’s second offering, COCK by Mike Bartlett. A sold-out hit when it first premiered in London in 2009 and subsequently during its off-Broadway run a year later, COCK revolves around a gay couple whose rocky relationship derails when one of them sleeps (and falls in love) with a woman. Debates over one’s sexual identity explode when all three decide to sit down and “duke it out” over dinner. Hilarity ensues when another unexpected guest turns up and loyalties are put to the test. As one character puts it, “It’s the ultimate bitch fight”.

SPIT or the Silly People's Improv Theater and the PETA Theater Center proudly present the Manila Improv Festival 2013 as they celebrate their 11th year anniversary which will run from June 25 – 30, 2013.

Kwento Ni Toto's correspondent Justin was able to attend a press conference of the said event and was able to know the details about SPIT's 11th year anniversary. So, for this year there theme is entitled “Follow Your Feet”, an improvisational theater concept which also ties in with the art form's return to PETA – the group that first introduced the improvisational theater to the country in the early 70s. As SPIT takes more ground on a new decade of laughter and innovation, the group decided to take bolder step in sharing the art of improv to bigger audiences through the festival and its partnership with PETA Theater Center.

As the artistic director of the festival and founder of SPIT, Gabe Mercado, shares the vision of the festival “SPIT was founded back in June 2002, because I saw the need for a new kind of comedy – one that differed from the usual stand-up comedy routines that we are used to seeing on TV and comedy bars. Improv appealed to me because of its grounding on truth, the magic of spontaneity, and the fun that on-the-spot creation brings about. We hope events like these help build the improv community of the country and the region.”

I'm an art lover and I would really want to see this and know more about this.

If you want to know more about Marcel Antonio read more below....


Press Release
In July of 2010, the poet V.I.S. de Veyra posted a blog essay on the art of Marcel Antonio titled “Blue Funk’d Stories: The Expanding Art of Marcel Antonio” (read at http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2010/07/blue-funked-silent-stories-expanding_26.html) and coined the phrase-tag Blue Funk Erotica for Antonio’s art. De Veyra described Blue Funk Erotica as 1) unsmiling faces-derived figurative drama (primarily portraiture, then), 2) replete of appropriations or art-historical quotes, 3) suggestive (but only suggestive) of a narrative, 4) quasi-rebellious towards rigid allusions and painting titles’ guidance, 5) unpainterly expressionist, 6) of an in-a-trance mood as against a happy one, and 7) conscriptive of the painting viewer as peeper. “This erotica should stay around and keep us entranced,” the poet-critic wrote, “being not so much one that tickles the groin as a kind that promotes the understanding that every face, gesture, object, color, and shape is a secret sex object and clandestine true story waiting to be told.” But also debunking a previous simplistic tag on Antonio’s art as “narrative expressionist,” de Veyra wrote: “In Antonio’s case, his blue funkism's ‘de-expression’, or ‘dis-expression’ and narrative confusion through the mannerisms of narrative imagery and titling, seems to be a produce of a Russian Formalist narrative bent to ‘defamiliarize’ images and shapes towards a higher enigma. Thus his refusal to ‘express’.”


The abovementioned blog started a dialogue between Antonio’s art as well as intent (of unintent) and de Veyra’s reading, culminating in a late-2011 collection titled “Desire, Ennui, Anxiety” which shall be shown this coming Feb 6 to 25 at the Yuchengco Museum.


This title for Antonio’s new series does not so much signal a change in his art’s direction as clarify where de Veyra’s reading is right and where it needs to be tweaked. For instance, while de Veyra opts for a Barthesian “variety of narrative possibilities,” Antonio’s pragmatic knowledge of his audience allows/welcomes two basic approaches to his art.


The one approach favours rigid symbolist readings, especially as Antonio is himself attracted to the “monumental” (Antonio’s term) figure common among utopian-art compositions (of Wagnerian glorifications, classical idealism, Nazi art, Stalinist totalitarian art, socialist realism, etc.) as well as in advertising art or the idealizations of soft porn.




But, for the other approach, Antonio acknowledges that de Veyra is right about his—Antonio’s—own efforts to frustrate, so to speak, all symbolist and narrative approaches, via experimentations with juxtapositions/relations and eclectic allusions. These experimentations, appropriations, and art-history quotes result in a dehumanized atmosphere, involving such stuff as machine esthetics and the usual facial expressions of ennui and boredom, all moving towards Antonio’s intended postmodernist multiplicity of meanings. But the final result on each single canvas is an invite to a pseudo-narrative half-aware of this pseudo-ness, welcoming while parodying the various cultural and moral significations possible to professional and popular semiotics.

In this sense, Antonio’s art would be self-described as anxious about the unknown, desirous of knowledge as a matter of course but likewise celebrating the ennui of knowledge’s elusivity, even the charm of that ennui itself alone. Ennui as both springboard and object of desire, then, visually fulfilled or illustrated on an Antonio-esque drama field.


A final stamp to this anti-narrative effort to “recover the sensation of life” (Victor Shklovsky) is the artist’s devotion to the coloration of Diego Velázquez or Chagall as well as the latent abstract geometrics beneath all his pseudo-narrative stagings.




We would like to invite people or media to witnesses the Marcel Antonio art work this coming Feb 6 2012 6pm for the opening for lunching on cocktail.V.I.S. de Veyra joins Antonio in this exhibit with fourteen new poems printed in the exhibition catalogue.


For more information about the show, contact the Yuchengco Museum, 2/F RCBC Plaza, cor. Ayala and Sen. Gil J. Puyat Aves., Makati City, Philippines 1200 or Galleria Quattrocento, 3rd Floor Glorietta 4 Art Space, Glorietta 4, Ayala Center, Barangay San Lorenzo, Makati City (Telephone: [632] 818-5939 // [632] 519-7221; Mobile #: 0917-8911322; Email: galleria.quattrocento@gmail.com; Website: http://philpaintings.com/).