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Wide open spaces: Silverlens relaunches in new location
Tucked away on Don Chino Roces Avenue Extension, Makati City, the new Silverlens Galleries that launched on January 7 detaches you from reality and transports you to the world of science fiction.
Owned by Isa Lorenzo and Rachel Rillo—two forces in the Philippine contemporary art scene—the 1,200-square-meter, two-storey space is futuristic, ethereal, and full of surprises. It currently features internationally known, exploratory artists such as Maria Taniguchi, Gregory Halili, Ryan Villamael, Pow Martinez, Gabby Barredo, Martha Atienza, and Patricia Perez Eustaquio.
The space-time warp experience immediately starts once you step into the gallery’s shady cavernous parking lot, which curator and 2006 CCP Thirteen Artists Award recipient Gary-Ross Pastrana transformed into an exhibition space projecting an underwater documentary by critically acclaimed Dutch-Filipino artist Martha Atienza onto an unpainted wall.
This mix of digital and natural, real and artificial, reminds one of Westworld’s office lab Delos. The vibe is a mesh of organic, modern, and machine, with an industrial finish. It aptly captures the experimental spirit of Silverlens and its desire to move local art forward while respecting its roots in the past.
“For the show, we really wanted to showcase old and new works from the gallery’s collection to create a narrative that tells you about the history of Silverlens and its vision moving forward,” Pastrana told GMA.
Featuring a roster of rebellious artists, the opening unravels what the two owners have learned after being in the industry for 11 years.
“We show artists with unique visual voices, strong visual voices with deep practices that go beyond trends or appropriation,” Isa Lorenzo said. “I guess because Rachel and I have seen a lot of work, we can kinda tell when someone is different, when they have their own beat. Good artists will always find an audience. It is our job to help them find this audience, and to grow it.”
Like a lighthouse at night, the gallery is the primary source of light that illumines the garage. Covered with translucent walls that only show you silhouettes of people and objects minus the details, the gallery proper leaves a sense of mystery and wonder to the onlooker. It teases you to go up and check out what’s up.
As you proceed upstairs, the landscape completely changes: suddenly it’s bright, warm and clear. In particular, the largest exhibition space creates the illusion that makes you feel like it’s seven in the morning, even at dusk. The rectangular light panels in the ceiling look like the LED panels from the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It has the same effect too.
Specially designed by Anthropology Lighting for Silverlens, the technology behind the panels allows subtle shifts in visual moods through an app-controlled light diffuser.
“It’s a LED light that can change color temperature evenly from 3000 to 6000 Kelvin. It can also be dimmed. It’s an Italian technology made in Asia. These lights are custom-made for us,” Isa Lorenzo explained.
Internationally renowned punk painter-musician Romeo Lee said he likes the lighting because his brush strokes could be better seen under it.
Developed by architect Anna Sy, Silverlens’ new home houses private and public viewing rooms, a large staff office, a library, four exhibition spaces, a backroom, art storage, studios for artists, workshop space, a pantry, and a unisex bathroom that looks like something you would find in Ursula Le Guin’s "The Left Hand of Darkness," where gender is androgynous and fluid.
The offbeat bathroom design seems to be a statement on gender neutrality, but Lorenzo said it was just an issue of space.
“We decided to merge the male and female bathrooms because of space constraints. It wasn’t really a big deal for us, until people started telling us that it was progressive,” she said.
Eleven years ago, Silverlens Galleries pioneered the Warehouse movement, prodding people to re-think what a gallery should be. And as they reopened this month, they’re bucking the status quo yet again, re-evaluating what they ought to be to better cater to the evolving art community.
“We wanted to present other ways of experiencing art,” Lorenzo said.
“The challenge is to get better at what we are doing, of reaching larger audiences in unorthodox ways, of bringing out the best in our artists, and getting their work in important collections internationally.”
The current shows at the gallery will run until February 4, while solos by Maria Taniguchi and Ryan Villamael will open next month. In addition, Silverlens will join Art Fair Philippines next month and Art Basel in Hong Kong this March. — BM, GMA News
Silverlens is at 2263 Don Chino Roces Avenue Extension, Makati City.
