Filmmaker Peque Gallaga opens first solo art exhibit ‘Gray Matters’

Veteran filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor Peque Gallaga revisited his childhood craft with his first solo art exhibit featuring the young kids of Negros, his homeland.  

"I started with this first because it was cheaper, but when I started doing films, naiwan ko ito. Pang-inspiration lang once in a while, once a year, pang-hobby," he said in a report on GMA News TV's Balitanghali on Saturday.



"Gray Matters" art exhibit featured sketches of kids aged 12 to 15 using charcoal pencil on paper.

"I chose 12 years old to 15 years old where their bodies are soft. And then I have rich kids, I have middle-class kids, and I have poor kids pero tinanggal ko ang mga props [showing] na ito pulibi, ito mayaman," he explained.

Known personalities attended the exhibit's opening last Saturday including actor Jaime Fabregas, singer Kuh Ledesma, writer Pete Lacaba, director Jose Javier Reyes, and actress and Gallaga's old friend Cherie Gil, who became emotional during her speech as the night's guest of honor.

"Thank you for the gifts you've given me in my life. Bravo. You did it," she told Gallaga.

In an interview with the press, Gil elaborated on her decades-old friendship with the filmmaker.

"I think it's a full circle. It is a combination of what Peque and I have gone through together since I was 17 when we did 'Champoy' [a gag show in the 80s], when we did 'Oro' [Oro, Plata, Mata], when we did others in between and Ishmael Bernal films. He always believed in me, and no matter what, he never gave up, up until now," she said.

Reyes, who also worked with Gallaga for the 1982 award-winning film "Oro, Plata, Mata", admitted that he never knew his fellow filmmaker is adept at another form of art.

"This came as a surprise because I never knew he was into this other aspect of the visual arts. At the same time, I am not surprised that he would come up with drawings of such quality because this is Peque and his level of artistic excellence," he said. — Trisha Macas/BM, GMA News

Gallaga's "Gray Matters" exhibit runs at Art Verite Gallery in Serendra, Bonificio Global City until May 2.