SILVERLENS Manila is pleased to participate in the fourteenth edition of Art Dubai, taking place from 29 March through 3 April 2021. For this occasion, the gallery is presenting a small but diverse collection of works by three of its represented artists: James Clar, Pio Abad, and Nicole Coson. The pieces included in this presentation demonstrate the artists’ distinct practices; consequently, each individual work boasts a different style and medium. 

Light and media artist James Clar, features two landmark installations, A New Dawn and Taking a ride with my best friend, first presented at Silverlens in 2019 – his first show in the Philippines. In these works, Clar applies his interest in new technological production processes to communicate narratives, bridging non-physical spaces with reality. In contrast, London-based artist Pio Abad presents a unique digital print on silk from his 2016 series My dear, there are always people who are just a little faster, more brilliant, and more aggressive. This work is reflective of Abad’s socio-political practice as it references an incident in the Marcos regime – a polarising time in Philippine history, and one that Abad recurrently investigates. Completing this triumvirate is emerging artist Nicole Coson, who has recently completed an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London and was selected as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020. She contributes a new painting to this varied collection, one that examines the concept of invisibility through military camouflage. 

James Clar (b. 1979, USA; lives and works in New York & Manila) is a light and media artist. His work analyzes the effects of media and technology on our perception of culture, nationality, and identity. He studied film at NYU and received his Masters from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. It was here that he began developing his own light systems to create visual sculptural works that combine light and technology.

Clar’s interest is in new technological production processes and their application to artistic narrative forms. His work often deals with the perception of reality and the information systems that create it. For his last exhibition in New York, he placed Japan’s top professional videogame players in a movie, interviewing them and asking if their dreams occur in the videogames they play (does their subconscious dream of a virtual place). For an exhibition in London, he placed an EEG reader onto the central processer of a computer while it played a seamless loop of the movie eXistenZ (recording the ‘brainwaves’ of a computer while it ‘‘thinks’ about a simulated reality).

Clar’s systems tell narratives situated on the edge of perception. By overlapping non-physical spaces (dream world, virtual world, or spiritual world), constants like gravity and space become pliable material. His interest is in the potential for storylines or narratives to exist.

From 2006 till 2012 Clar’s studio was based in Dubai where he became an active participant in the arts and culture scene of the globalized city. From 2012 until 2020 he moved his studio back to New York where he graduated, also teaching a graduate course at his alma mater. In 2021, James opened a studio in Manila to work from the Asian region.

Clar was an artist in residence at Eyebeam Atelier in New York, Fabrica in Italy, and the FedEx Institute of Technology/Lantana Projects in Memphis. He has previously held studio practices in Tokyo and Dubai, and was an artist in residence at Eyebeam Atelier in New York, Fabrica in Italy, and the FedEx Institute of Technology/Lantana Projects in Memphis. His artwork has been included in exhibitions at Glucksman Museum (Dublin), The New Museum of Contemporary Arts (New York), Pera Museum (Istanbul), Cam Francis Museum (Barcelona), MACBA (Barcelona), and SeMA (Seoul). He has been commissioned to develop largescale installations for 21c Museum Hotels (Oklahoma), Parasol Unit Foundation for the Arts (UK), Fraport Headquarters (Frankfurt), and Dynatrace (Linz).

Pio Abad (b. 1983, Manila, lives and works in London) began his art studies at the University of the Philippines before receiving a BA from Glasgow School of Art and an MA from the Royal Academy Schools, London. He has recently exhibited at Honolulu Biennial, Hawaii (2019); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2018); Art Basel Encounters, Hong Kong (2017); Para Site, Hong Kong (2017); Kadist, Paris (2017); Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2016); 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2016); EVA International Biennial, Limerick (2016); e-flux, New York City (2015); Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art and Design Manila (2015); Gasworks, London (2014) and Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Manila (2014).

Pio Abad’s practice is concerned with the social and political signification of things. His work, in a range of media including textiles, drawing, installation and photography, uses strategies of appropriation to mine alternative or repressed historical events, unravel official accounts and draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people. Often taking on the form of domestic accessories, Abad’s artworks glide seamlessly between these histories, enacting quasi-fictional combinations with their leftovers.

Nicole Coson (b. 1992, Manila, lives and works in the UK) is a Filipino artist, who has recently completed an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. She has been selected as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020. 

Coson’s work operates between the anonymous and deeply personal, between a specific place in her personal history and anywhere at all. She creates works that seek to stretch and skew the viewer’s ability to detect cultural precursors as identity and location blend into seamlessness constructing a space which is both familiar and alien. Her latest works function as architectural interventions of physical space, each work serving as a doorway into a dimension between worlds and beyond time.