Jonathan Olazo is holding his latest solo exhibition at Manila Contemporary’s Main Gallery.
“The Hotel Painter” seeks to reclaim abstraction’s dignity in a society that has relegated it to mere decoration. Playfully taking the hotel environment as a starting point for this type of dismissal, Olazo attempts to look at it from another angle, where the hotel instead becomes a temporary refuge for a reflection on painting.
The artist’s exposure to abstraction started in his childhood, when his father, renowned abstract artist Romulo Olazo, would bring him to see videos of abstract expressionists at the Jefferson Center along Buendia Avenue in Makati in the late ’80s. As he continued his formal education, abstraction’s allure would then grow to become Olazo’s signature aesthetic as a professional artist.
For the exhibition, he revisits a series made in the mid-’90s called “The Idiot Paintings,” which focused on experimenting with acrylic stains, wax pouring and other varnishes. Once again taking this freer and more spontaneous strategy, he concentrates on expression rather than form by methodically filling his surfaces with seductive colors and strong gestural marks. Mistakes are, therefore, encouraged, and accidents celebrated.
The titles for the work act as an additional exercise in wit, combining his knowledge of music and books with commentaries on various aspects of life.
In various social contexts, abstract forms have continued to captivate the masses through a painterly inventiveness of pure expression. Grounded and inspired by this tradition, Olazo continues to work toward becoming an instrument for revealing the possibility, potential, and even emotional/intellectual utopias of the medium itself.
Jonathan Olazo obtained a BFA Painting degree from the College of Fine Arts at University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, in 1992. Since the late ’80s, he has staged solo and group shows at Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, Drawing Room, Green Papaya Art Projects, Finale Art File, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Magnet Galleries and Crucible Gallery. His more recent one-man exhibitions include “Dionysian Johnesian” at Paseo Gallery, 2011; “Answers Where Poetry Does Not Exist,” White Box Studio, 2009; “Designer Emo for the Pseudo Tortured Soul” at West Gallery, 2009; and “The Ballad Phantasmagoria of Judas Bear Love Uber Bear” at Mo_Space, 2009.
Manila Contemporary is at Whitespace, 2314 Chino Roces Ave. Ext. (formerly Pasong Tamo Extension), Magallanes, Makati City. “Jonathan Olazo: The Hotel Painter” coincides with “Sacred Spaces,” a solo exhibit by Eric Sausa on view in the Upstairs Gallery. Exhibition runs till June 9.
