In conversation with Silverlens New York director Katey Acquaro, Ryan Villamael details the material, historical, and personal references in his first US solo exhibition, ISLES. In ISLES, Villamael presents a continuation of his Pulô series, delicate paper cut outs of flora often layered with both archaic and contemporary maps of the Philippines encased in glass bell jars alongside Echoes of Home, a multi-sensory installation combining a framed architectural blueprint with an audio recording of intimate voice tapes between the artist and his mother to be sent to his father while he worked abroad in the Middle East.

Having been a witness to my parents’ political struggle has given me a really, really solid understanding of the possibilities and the limitations of art. I take that with me with everything I do, that there is an attempt to cover these monumental moments in history, but at the same time, it’s still very much a drawing. And I need to spend as much time thinking about how beautiful that drawing is. And I think that’s why beauty is always this insistent element in my work, because as much as I believe that art has this transformative potential, it will not realize that potential if people don’t want to look at it. And so the power of seduction for me, really is the power of art.

At Silverlens is a suite of new paintings by Manila-based artist Pow Martinez, who will open a solo show at the gallery’s New York space next month. The figures in his paintings are crudely and grotesquely rendered, all part of his send-up of US culture and how it is exported through soft power internationally to locales in the Global South like the Philippines.