Pintô International is launching its quarterly exhibitions program on March 9, with the opening of “Aliens of Manila: New York Colony,” an immersive site-specific installation by Filipino artist and designer Leeroy New, at 431 East 12 St., New York, New York.
The exhibit is curated by Pintô International director Dr. Luca Parolari, and launches the organization’s new regularly programmed global exhibitions and event series.
New has created an immersive, site-specific installation responding to the structure of the space. “Aliens of Manila: New York Colony” is a warping, psychedelic sculpture constructed from food covers, flexible conduit, fiberglass strips, cable ties, and other materials that cling to the architecture of Pintô’s East Village loft. The sculpture comprises materials from recycling centers, surplus shops, dollar stores, and industrial market districts local to New York.
New is also presenting a series of wearable sculptures, an extension of his design projects in interdisciplinary design and architecture.
‘Material conduit’
Started in 2014, “Aliens of Manila” is an artistic series referencing and re-appropriating the archetypal New York street-style photography. For the project, the artist, his friends, and local collaborators don the costumes in public as a kind of “material conduit” between the artist and the environment. This “staged displacement” creates a literal and visual duality between the native and the “alien.” The series speaks to the wider experience of cultural displacement but is profoundly informed by the artist’s own familial experience with the phenomenon of what he refers to as “OFW”—overseas Filipino workers.
Pintô International is the New York-based entity overseeing non-profit foundation Pintô Art Museum in the Philippines’ global exhibitions and programming. The organization is committed to supporting the careers of pioneering contemporary artists of the region and to fostering global connoisseurship for their distinct artistic practices.
Starting this spring, Pintô International will present quarterly exhibitions, an artist residency program, and monthly Pintô Sessions event series at the East Village location.
Pintô founder and president Dr. Joven Cuanang says, “For over three decades, it has been my unwavering vocation to undertake the promotion and support of contemporary Philippine art in my home of Manila. As Pintô builds its global constituency, we are looking to New York’s uniquely cosmopolitan, progressive arts community to join us in building a dialogue around and a platform for the contributions of living Filipino artists.”
Dr. Parolari adds, “With the inauguration of the Pintô International global headquarters this spring, the organization is uniquely poised to take our mission of cultural diplomacy even further, providing a curatorial platform and cultural forum in the heart of downtown New York City. We believe that our mission is both timely and important as we leverage our headquarters to expand the organization’s global footprint and promote the arts of the region internationally.”
Contemporary museum
Pintô Art Museum is an exhibition space and contemporary museum located in the Philippines’ historic pilgrimage city of Antipolo outside of Manila. The museum was founded in 2010 to publicly exhibit the art collection of Cuanang, a Filipino neurologist and patron of the arts.
The museum (pintô means door in Filipino) was founded on the principle that art plays a diplomatic role in bridging distinctive nationalities, world views and communities.
Dr. Cuanang began collecting in the spirit of local artistic patronage in the late 1980s when he championed a revolutionary Philippine artist collective, The Salingpusa, through dedicated connoisseurship and acquisitions. The political movements associated with the People Power Revolution in 1986 and the fall of the Marcos regime ushered an era of creative expression and artistic freedom. Dr. Cuanang became a proponent for other practicing artists in the region and earned a reputation as a patron in the Philippine artistic community.
The museum collection includes works by artists Elmer Borlongan, Mark Justiniani, Jose John Santos III, Emmanuel Garibay, and Antonio Leano, among others.
Today, the Pintô Art Museum presents rotating exhibitions of the foundation’s collection and oversees an adjacent gallery space that continues to exhibit and promote contemporary Filipino artists.
Pintô International was founded in 2017 in New York City’s East Village with the intention of continuing to promote the art of Filipino contemporary artists on an international stage. Serving as a headquarters, artist residency and curatorial space for the projects undertaken by the organization, Pintô International provides extended support to artists from the region with the intention of fostering their wider critical, curatorial or connoisseurial goals.
