In Memoriam Olazo’s 1st One-Man Show in Singapore
MANILA, Philippines - Paseo Gallery Manila and Jada Art Singapore are proud to present Romulo Olazo’s first one-man show in Singapore “Romulo Olazo: A Swirl of a Time” at the ION Art Gallery, Level 4, ION Orchard, Singapore. The exhibit from September 27 to October 3, 2015 included an artist’s reception on September 30.
The exhibit came to fruition after lengthy and numerous discussions and the project finalized long before Olazo was confined and succumbed to multiple organ failure.
The Diaphanous Swirl Series emphatically marks the later period of Olazo’s body of artworks spanning more than four decades of artistic journey and development.
Emanating from a central point in a formal pictorial composition, the Swirl paintings are characterized by curvilinear but intuitive shapes choreographed in a roundabout dance that are made to pulsate in varying luminosities. They evoke a poetic calm and a philosophical sense of stability and wholeness. The Swirl Series also departs from Olazo’s professed norm of black-and-white formats with the use of bolder colors, vigorous forms and extemporal compositions.
The seminal painting of the Swirl Series is Diaphanous #725, done by the artist in 2007. It is an unconscious resurfacing or reincarnation of the few and lasting memories the artist has of his father, and became the subject of his “Pinwheel Series”, best described as nostalgic and autobiographical. It depicts a father carrying his son piggyback with an outstretched arm and thrusting in his hand a paper pinwheel. It is also one of the few memories Olazo had with his father, who passed away when the artist was only six years old.
