The Filarts Gallery, the newest and only artist-run gallery around north of Quezon City, will open on Sunday, May 15, with an aptly titled art exhibit called Unang Hirit.
The Filarts Gallery prides itself as so far the only gallery located in the Fairview-Novaliches area. It is actually housed at the Robinsons Novaliches mall, a stone’s throw away from SM City Fairview and the Ayala Terraces, along Quirino Highway.
Unang Hirit will open FilArts Gallery with a mixture of art modes and tendencies, from traditional representational styles to abstract expressionist compositions. Unang Hirit artists are the founding members of the gallery.
First is Roy Espinosa, a venerable artist who has exhibited in Malaysia, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey, the U.S.A. and other countries. He has been a publisher of art coffee-table books and art periodicals. His latest publication projects are Philippine Art and Beyond (2022) and the Contemporary Arts By Asian Artists (2021), which are now available at selected art galleries in Metro Manila.
There’s also Mark Viñas who is fast-becoming known for his knack for redeeming old, disposed artworks from unknown artists, re appropriating them into various media. True to form, he is now a highly sought-after art-picker who brings old unknown scarp paintings back into life.
Also in the pool is Roy Ama who delves on the gestural abstract application of acrylic medium and subsequently harmonizes the image with carefully drawn orb-like images to fulfill some subconcious narratives from the recent past.
Rounding out the group are Al Vargas and Julius Clar. Vargas mines his childhood memories and draws nostalgic scenes in small watercolor work which he subsequently convert into larger acrylic medium renditions on canvas. Clar first picked up his paint brush in 2018 and has been doing quiet abstract work on canvas, his hand-crafted darkroom-produced b/w photographs (silver gelatin prints) have been shown at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, The Ayala Museum, The Lopez memorial Museum, The Art Center in Mega Mall and other places.
FilArts gallery will hold regular exhibitions, art sales, Asian artists’ shows and other art-related activities. One direction that FilArts Gallery wants to pursue is the quality of its inventory and their affordability. At FilArts the beautiful can be affordable!
