Studio Studies | Jason Dy, SJ

Studio Studies
Jason Dy, SJ
29 June to 2 August 2019
Opening Reception: 29 June, Saturday at 6 pm
3F Galleries
UP Vargas Museum

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The UP Vargas Museum opens the exhibition titled Studio Studies on 29 June, Saturday, at the 3F Galleries of the museum. Jason Dy, SJ thinks through the nature of the studio in his new exhibition.

Studio Studies responds to the question, “What is the function of the studio?,” raised by the French conceptual artist, Daniel Buren. Dy examines not just the function of the studio in relation to his situational and participatory art projects since 2009 when he founded the Alternative Contemporary Art Studio (ACAS) in the garage of Sacred Heart Parish administration building, Cebu City.

Dy is mainly interested in understanding the concept and praxis of a studio as a scaffolding that mutually supports creative practices of artists; a laboratory that simultaneously cares and controls the fragility of artworks; and a blueprint that interactively relates to studied ideas, stored resources, and salvaged materials. This studio exploration is an important aspect of his art practice that investigates into “the community and studio-based responses to changing religious and cultural circumstances, locations and events.”

The artworks and objects presented in the exhibition range from video installations, found objects, drawings, bottled ecospheres and terrariums, detrital exhibition materials, annotated blueprints, archival documents to art collections of ACAS. In the installation entitled “Supported Scaffolding,” it features the artworks of Cebuano artists, namely, KoloWn, Nomar Miano, Jose Mari Picornell, Celso Pepito, Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano, Jose “Kimsoy” Yap, Jr., Gigi Ocampo, Estela Ocampo-Fernandez, Felix Catarata, Wyndelle Remonde, Radel Paredes, Vidal Alcoseba, Jr., and Wenceslao “Tito” Cuevas, Jr. on a propped-up white wall.

These presented works are material manifestations of what are conceptualized and produced, collected and stored, documented and archived as well as re-contextualized and re-represented in multiple spaces that Dy inhabits from Cebu City to Liverpool City and on to Quezon City as studio spaces. The multiplicity of these spaces may be of reflective of the itinerant situation of artists like Dy or perhaps, may point to the reality of the studio as an in-between space of the eternal placement/displacement of art works.

Jason Dy, SJ (b. 1977, Philippines)

Dy is a Jesuit priest and Filipino contemporary artist who is currently lecturing at the Fine Arts Department of the Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City. He is a self-taught artist who developed his artistic interests by attending art workshops, art classes, art conferences and art exhibitions as well as integrating art into his studies in theology and his pastoral ministry. In 2013, after being a parochial vicar at Sacred Heart Parish, Cebu City and holding his solo exhibition Testimony of What Remains at the Fernando Amorsolo Gallery, Cultural Center of the Philippines, he pursued his graduate studies in the arts, namely, MA by Creative Practice and MA in Art History and Curating at Liverpool Hope University, UK. Through his graduate studies, he is able to articulate his current creative practice that investigates into “the community and studio-based responses to changing religious and cultural circumstances, locations and events” (LHU).

Some of his important art projects include In Loving Memory, a participatory art ritual of remembering the dead that started during the All Souls’ Day at the Sacred Heart Parish, Cebu City, PH in 2009 and was included in the contemporary Christian art exhibition Arte + Fe curated by Maria Tarruella at the Pons Fundacion, Madrid, Spain (2011); Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a graduate thesis exhibition at the Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK that essayed on death, mourning, and remembrance in loving memory of his father (2014); Kanlungan ng Awa (Sanctuary of Mercy), an immersive installation of an altar of repose with four interrelated components of a makeshift chapel from its altar, ceiling, carpet flooring, to its stations of the cross in partnership with the Kristong Hari Parish, Commonwealth, PH in 2016 and was part of a two-man show New Order curated by Ricky Francisco at the Lopez Museum, PH (2017); Barter, an art project that reacted to the 2016 Kidapawan Protest seeking rice subsidy from the government rather than the violent treatment of farmers as well as appropriating the traditional mode of exchange through the barter system to reflect on the various exchanges that is happening in Lucban, Quezon, PH in collaboration with Barangay Piis, Lucban at the Project Space Pilipinas (2016); and Procesion de los Camareros in response of Japanese invasion in 8 December 1941 on the day of an important Marian procession in Intramuros during the Spanish colonial period was a commissioned art project of the first Manila Biennale Open City curated by Ringo Bunoan with the participation of the fifteen pedicab drivers from Barangay 655, Intramuros, Manila, PH (2017-2018).

Studio Studies exhibition runs until 2 August.

For more information, please contact Vargas Museum at (+632) 981-8500 loc. 4024 (U.P. trunkline) or (+632) 928-1927, or send an email to vargasmuseum@up.edu.ph. You may also check http://vargasmuseum.upd.edu.ph, Facebook and Twitter for updates.