“The Winds That Will Be Howling” interrogates our relationship with nature and the environment. The exhibition’s title is lifted from William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us” where our dominating presence as supposed guardians and keepers of the natural world is challenged and deemed deleterious. Hence, the works of Meghan Hildebrand, Geremy Samala, Imam Santoso, and Nasser Lubay are prompts that demand us to reflect on this power we have.

Color – by definition, it is an attribute of visual perception that can be told through categories such as red, blue, yellow, or purple. Contemplating on the existence of colors, it is effortless to think that colors are independent properties of commodities in our environment: properties such as shape and size, whose nature independently exists based on our experience of them. If this were the case, how do colors fit into the world? Do they even exist?

Color – by definition, it is an attribute of visual perception that can be told through categories such as red, blue, yellow, or purple. Contemplating on the existence of colors, it is effortless to think that colors are independent properties of commodities in our environment: properties such as shape and size, whose nature independently exists based on our experience of them. If this were the case, how do colors fit into the world? Do they even exist?

THAT spirit of optimism lives in all of Lubay’s works. The artist values the power of being driven by a goal, having risen from his own set of challenges early in life.

Lubay lived with different relatives when he was a child as his mother worked abroad. One of his many stops was in Mindanao, where he worked as a farmer. He often climbed coconut trees to escape the harsh realities of poverty on the ground, seeking solace from the overlooking view of rice fields and the distant horizon.

“Dun ako nagsimula mangarap,” he said.

It's hard! So far I haven't seen one. My art is free flowing, so unless someone is really dedicated to imitate, they won’t be able to do it. My art is difficult to replicate. I tried to replicate my own art through digital means and it’s difficult. I wasn't able to capture its depth and dimension as well as when it’s painted by hand.

"Always go with your instinct, so that you don’t get pressured and you’re relaxed when you create. Just do what you like and go with your instinct. Make something that’s solely yours. Own it.”

Describing his art, Lubay said he is inclined to paint his perpetually evolving encounters and reimagined moments, frustrations and exaggerations that he tries to compress and expand in his reflexively conjured images.

“My art is a new semi-abstraction created through psychedelic processes, but as I explore my skills and sensibilities, I am interested in the melding of traditional aesthetics and contemporary visual outcomes. I allow my mind to wander freely and unceasingly, even to get lost in the moment, flux of imagination and small epiphanies until they produce visual marks that yield their own resonance and sense of meaning,” he explained.

The Philippine Embassy in Singapore is proud to present Art Trek 12, which will feature 24 Filipino artists and nine Singapore galleries beginning 25 September 2018 until the end of October.

Apart from the many participating visual artists, this year’s Art Trek will also feature sculptors and a toy artist—a reflection of the diversity and eclectic styles of contemporary Filipino artists.

“I look forward to the support of our Singaporean and Filipino friends, as well as from the various art connoisseurs in Singapore, as we stage this year’s Art Trek. Singapore has indeed become among the art capitals of the world and we are honoured that this time 24 Filipino artists will be showcasing their talent,” Ambassador to Singapore Joseph Del Mar Yap said.

His images are often billowing vistas of narrative laden, layered images if not singularly amorphous images that bloom with flourishing details and other suggestive elements. Subjects and themes whether inspired by Mayan cultures, animals, buildings, wallpapers, real or imagined or just products of quotidian thoughts and everyday living, all find connection in nature and natural processes. Intuitive creativity is the wisdom of this engagement and artworks were conjured and visually phrased in images that can be fantastical and patently surreal as pastiche and veiled interpretations of reality, partly guided in form by intellect and feelings.

Immediately, Lubay shows interest in growing things and biotic process as he proffers the idea of sense of growth, creative commitment, promise and potential, beginnings and man’s inborn and inherent instincts and focus on lives or alive or even what men has created to ensure his survival. The seed and anything plant like as the core metaphor of beginnings, nascent phases of things leading to their graceful trajection ---- they have nowhere to go but to shoot upward and grow. It can be also be an allusion to the creative mind’s inherent character to unfold its limitless potential.

SURFACE ASIA MAGAZINE : HOT PROSPECTOR
FILIPINO ARTIST NASSER LUBAY IS A CREATIVE OPPORTUNIST, SEIZING ANY CHANCE TO TRY NEW CHALLENGES. When a door closed. self-taught artist Nasser Lubay opened a window. Having missed the deadline for submissions for a nationally recognised art competition, Nasser turned to technology in search of alternatives. "I Googled 'international art prize, says the artist with a smile. His fortuitous search eventually led him to the Celeste Prize, an international art competition held in Berlin, where his watercolour work Rebirth earned him second honours and the distinction of being the only Filipino to have ever won the prize. Rebirth represents much of Lubay's blossoming artistic style: rooted in tattoo and graphic art, impossibly detailed and outlandishly coloured. It is Salvador Dali on acid. "Most of my works are all about moments," says Lubay, "It's an emotion that I try to capture on canvas." There is no distinguishable object in his paintings, but only a miasma of half-remembered dreams.

Hablanos un poco de ti y de tus comienzos...

Yo era un muchachito de granja cuando empecé a dibujar mis sueños. Mi madre y mi padre apoyaron este talento aunque no siempre estuvieron presentes mientras crecí. A mis hermanos y a mí nos cuidaron diferentes familias mientras crecimos. No es fácil crecer en una familia rota, pero aprendi muchas lecciones valiosas.

Siempre que dibujo o pinto siento que soy transformado hacia un mundo diferente, como si fuese capaz de alcanzar algo. El sentimiento de crear es indescriptible y nunca ha dejado de inspirarme desde entonces.

Recuerdo que cuando estaba en la primaria y se me dificultaba hacerme de amigos, yo empezaba a dibujar y mi trabajo resultaba atractivo para mis compañeros y así ellos se hacían mis amigos. Hasta que crecí, siempre ha sido el arte lo que me ha atraído suerte.

A new trend in Asian contemperory art talks of the visual language of animation and comics, aptly termed — Animamix

The term ‘Animamix’ was coined in 2006 by the Taiwanese art critic and curator Victoria Lu to describe a new aesthetic trend she had observed in Asian contemporary art, one that incorporates the visual language of animation and comics.

Lu helped organise the inaugural Animamix Biennial in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Shanghai, and the event has now expanded to four museums in the first major cross-straits international biennial, which began in December.

Exhibitions around the Animamix theme are being staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, Today’s Art Museum in Beijing, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei and the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou.

Lu, who is the creative director of the MoCA Shanghai and the artistic director of the biennial, said that Animamix’s characteristics include the worship of youth and the pursuit of an idealised youthful beauty; strong narrative texts and images; and the use of vivid and colourful visuals derived from electronic media.

The Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) is holding its third IMMAP Open Mic Night "The Main Event" at Time in Manila, 7840 Makati Avenue at 6 p.m. September 28.

"The Main Event" is the third serving of the much awaited, highly acclaimed Open Mic Night Series that IMMAP has pioneered since 2011.

Its two predecessors, IMMAP 20x20 powered by Pecha-Kucha.org and IMMAP Goods Worth Spreading A Fishbowl Evening, were massively successful with more than 300 people attending, engaging, tweeting and networking around topics that matter to the digital, advertising, media, marketing communities.

Previous Open Mics saw the likes of Jim Paredes, Pie Alvarez, Noemi Dado, Jay Jaboneta, Chay Saputil-Mondejar, Carlo Ople, artists Nasser Lubay and Niccolo Cosme leading discussions across a wide array of topics ranging from the serious to the fun, relevant, casual and sometimes even to out of this world conversations the community truly enjoyed.

After a rather short conversation with our July / August artist Nasser Lubay from the Philippines, we managed to edit this small teaser / interview just to present Nasser to you and to hear in his own words a bit about his work. He talked about his technique, the awards he's won, the international opportunities he's had and the desire to never grow old... well, at least not for the moment. He even managed to share some Spanish he's picking up during his residency.