Paseo Gallery is mounting “Romulo Olazo: Black and White Redux” at SM Megamall Art Center until Nov. 5.
Showcasing a suite of recent paintings, Olazo returns to one of the themes that have endured in his multifaceted and long-standing art career.
Olazo’s romance with the black-and-white theme began in 1971 with his black-and-white collograph prints series which he produced up to 1974. In 1979, Olazo had a one-man exhibit of black-and-white paintings at the Luz Gallery and in 1982, at the Main Gallery of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, 13 large black-and-white paintings.
In 1994, Olazo held a simultaneous exhibit involving galleries at the SM Art Walk and culminated at the SM Art Center.
The exhibitions presented a variety of styles and mediums like printmaking, tapestry, and Olazo’s signature styles in painting. It is but nostalgic for Olazo to go back to his first love and to the same venue almost two decades later.
For Olazo, the theme of black-and-white in painting poses the challenge to any artist to investigate and understand the strength and necessity of form in painting. Without colors and maintaining painting to its barest elements, it is a true test to any artist’s pictorial sense and vision, form and compositional structure.
Coupled with the new suite of paintings are important and rarely seen works from the artist’s studio that highlight Olazo’s foray into the theme and gives light to the artist’s development in the said theme.
“Romulo Olazo: Black and White Redux” will close with an artist’s reception on Nov. 5, 6 p.m., at the SM Megamall Art Center.