Atop the nondescript Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) building on West Avenue in Quezon City, a metamorphosis of sorts has happened.
The penthouse, a portion of which was an abandoned tax collection office, has been transformed into Arts Above, a 120-seater theater with a spacious lobby-cum-coffee shop and an art gallery above it.
The theater exudes an Old World charm warmed by wood paneling, ceiling and grillwork salvaged from an abandoned mansion.
In contrast, what is now called the District Gallery a floor above it, is stark white by design, the better to highlight the paintings that graced the recent inaugural exhibit “Inhabit.”
Founded by Artist Playground, an arts and performance company, in collaboration with St. Vincent School, this newest art space promises to inspire, engage, excite and connect people through contemporary art and stage productions.
Its theater’s maiden offering was “M Episode.” Directed by Roeder Camañag, it was a two-in-one production of James Chalmers’ “Prelude to Macbeth” and an abridged version of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”
It featured Paul Jake Paule as Macbeth and Mailes Kanapi as Lady Macbeth, they of the original Artist Playground I lovingly called “AP.”
AP is a tiny theater aptly called The Little Room Upstairs, a hole-in-the-wall in a condominium tower on Timog Avenue.
Founded in 2015, AP could accommodate 30 theatergoers. But it showed critically acclaimed one-act plays such as Rody Vera’s “Happiness Is a Pearl,” Jim Bergado’s Filipino translation of Leoncio Deriada’s “Riddle of the Sphinx,” Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio’s “Tag-Ani,” and an experimental one-woman show featuring Kanapi titled “Audire.”
‘Inhabit’
The transformation all started with the meeting of AP visual artist Nasser Lubay (winner of the Celeste International Art Prize in Berlin) and St. Vincent School’s Edsel Velasco in a fiberglass-making workshop.
Velasco dreamt of an arts school attached to St. Vincent School. Lubay introduced him to AP founders Jesse Lucas and Roeder Camañag who, through the Artist Playground, lead a movement that celebrates the power of creation.
From its inception, AP has been envisioned to be “a training ground not confined within structured limitations or popular boundaries, where emerging, mid-career and seasoned artists breathe life into their creative ideas.”
District Gallery’s “Inhabit” expounds the theme of the old French word enhabiter, which means “dwell in.” For its organizers, getting into the new space, which has been refitted and decorated accordingly, is not only to view art but also to encounter and be an active part of a community of artists of all kinds and persuasion.
“Inhabit” gathers nine artists—Mideo Cruz, Raquel de Loyola, Jes Aznar, Cian Dayrit, Buen Abrigo, Frances Abrigo, Cheese, Archie Oclos and Lubay—to inhabit spaces that include ideas, traditions and even habits.
‘Forms of the Formless’
From West Avenue, we go to Ayala Museum and its Artist Space, where a leap of faith has transformed colors and exquisite details in an art exhibit by Dexter Sy—“Forms of the Formless.”
With his mixed media, carpets and canvas, Sy has abstracted his interpretation of Bible verses and the narratives of the Christian faith.
As the exhibit note says, Sy “contemplates on the paradox of the formless, the idea of the ultimate truth, the divine and the sacred, the highest consciousness or being.”
He brings it to form by weaving his spirituality through the literal weaving of images from torn carpets onto his canvas. The result is a visual feast of images and symbolism, both philosophical and metaphysical.
Prolific and hardworking
Sy first earned recognition as an artist when he won the Grand Prize in the 1st Maningning Miclat Art Competition in 2004, when he was still a student at Far Eastern University. The jury composed of Danny Dalena, Nestor Vinluan and Gerardo Tan chose his finely executed acrylic-and-ink painting “Dominus Vobiscum” for the prize.
He worked as graphic designer and art director for five years after graduation and turned full-time artist in 2011. In 2012, he was invited to be a special lecturer at his alma mater, where he teaches advertising and painting.
On Aug. 1 -Sept. 8, he will be an artist-in-residence in Rochelle, France, as a grantee of Alliance Française de Manille. He will open his exhibit there on Sept. 7. His wife, L J Ablola, who was herself a finalist in the Maningning Awards the year he won the Grand Prize, is heavy with child, their first after seven years.—CONTRIBUTED