Form | Kata Proto-type | Roberto M.A. Robles

Form | Kata Proto-type

Pag-saka ng Katagalugan
The Red Deer Route
Identity in Post-sculpture Works
Roberto M.A. Robles

16 July – August 2020
1F Galleries and Landing, outdoor West porch, and driveway

Click here to go to the Facebook event page of the exhibition for the latest updates.

The University of the Philippines Vargas Museum, in partnership with Galleria Duemila, virtually opens the solo exhibition of Roberto M.A. Robles, Form | Kata   Proto-type, at the 1F Galleries, outdoor West porch, and Driveway on 16 July, Thursday, at 6 o’clock in the evening.

The cocktail reception and physical viewing of Roberto Robles’s Form | Kata Proto-type have been postponed indefinitely due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Further information regarding this exhibition will be announced through the Vargas Museum’s social media platforms as quarantine measures develop.

Roberto M.A. Robles returns to the UP Vargas Museum with the exhibition Form | Kata   Proto-type, a conceptual continuation of Tagalog at Taga-ilog mounted eight years past. Perceiving the metaphysical universe to be beyond the realm of figuration, Robles executes his minimalist post-sculptural forms in marble mined from the marble-rich mountains of Teresa, Rizal. The rough and unfinished metamorphic rock is hewn simply – into cubes, a cross, a cuboid, and escombro (debris) – belying the semiotic depth drawn out by Robles. Form | Kata   Proto-type is a proposal of Tagalog identity, a dissection of form to reveal layers formed by periods of intense heat and pressure: primordial beginnings and migrations evidenced by petroglyphs, fossils, and oral mythology, colonial conquest and revolution, political unrest and radical cultural shifts, and the contemporary milieu. The exhibition is an invitation to formulate Filipino counter-narratives, casting off the cultural dominance of the current Euro-centric world.

Visual artist Roberto M.A. Robles hails from Tuy, Batangas and has been an active artist for forty years. He graduated from the University of the East in 1980 then completed his MFA in Sculpture at the University of Tsukuba, Japan in 1995. He has exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Yuchengco Museum, UP Vargas Museum, at Alliance Francaise (France), the 17th Asian International Art Exhibition (S. Korea), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum (Japan), and at various other exhibitions in Chile, South Africa, and Australia.

Form | Kata   Proto-type will be on view at the 1F Lobby, West Wing, and 1F Landing Galleries, outdoor West porch, and driveway of the UP Vargas Museum until 9 May, 2020. A related exhibition, Form | Ode Katha will be on view at Galleria Duemila from 7-31 March 2020.

For more information, please contact Vargas Museum at (+632) 8981-8500 loc. 4024 (UP trunkline), (+632) 8928-1927 or send an email to vargasmuseum@up.edu.ph. You may also check our website at http://vargasmuseum.upd.edu.ph, Facebook via https://fb.me/vargasmuseum.upd and Twitter via @UPVargasMuseum for updates.