Works by Roberto Chabet

The showcase exhibition is comprised of a series of collages, drawings and an installation by artist Roberto Chabet (1937 – 2013). Chabet, widely known as the Father of Philippine Conceptual Art, established an alternative paradigm beyond the prevalent art movements such as modernist abstraction and social realism during the 60s and 70s in the Philippines and significantly influenced the contemporary generation of Filipino artists, as suggested in works such as To Be Continued (2010), which consists of 10 plywood panels and a neon sign; the work was made by Chabet’s students under his instruction to create colors by mixing red, blue and yellow paint (the emblematic colors of modernism). His collages such as the China Collage Series (1985-86) feature various ordinary materials ranging from maps, envelops, paper bags, postcards, score sheets and illustrations, assembled under the artist’s unique systems exploring the physical and symbolic relationships between objects. The exhibition also brings together the Imagined Geographies (2011) drawings, which express the artist’s fluid and ambiguous perceptions of ‘place’.