Silverlens is pleased to announce its participation in Frieze Los Angeles, in recognition of the need to come together and stand with Los Angeles and its arts community at this crucial moment. Silverlens will present a booth featuring works by Pacita Abad, Keka Enriquez, Kawayan de Guia, and Pow Martinez. Together, the artists hold a mirror to the sprawling influence of California, reflecting a complex interplay of geopolitical histories and the state’s enduring role as a gateway to the US for the Asia Pacific region.

Although she is one of the most celebrated artists of our era and was tirelessly dedicated to her practice throughout her lifetime, it was not until after her death in 2004 that Pacita Abad (b. 1946 - d. 2004, Batanes, Philippines) earned widespread, global recognition. The presentation at Frieze Los Angeles features luminously colored multi-media works on paper made by Abad between 1976 and 1993.

California-based artist Keka Enriquez (b. 1962, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in San Francisco, California, USA), whose presentation at Frieze Los Angeles comes on the heels of her major solo exhibition at Silverlens Manila, will showcase all-new oil paintings. Enriquez was celebrated as one of the leading artists of her generation in 1990s Philippines, with Pacita Abad once describing her as her favorite emerging painter.

Kawayan de Guia (b. 1979 Baguio City, Philippines; lives and works in Baguio City) uses indigenous and colonial artifacts and playfully transforms them into lavish and often ironic critiques of consumerism, global trade, and the impact of the American occupation of the Philippines.

Drawn to California via an endless stream of 1990s films and YouTube clips, the absurd paintings of Pow Martinez (b. 1983, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Manila) satirize the menacing shadow of US pop culture. In a series of twelve outlandish sports-and-leisure themed portraits created for Silverlens’ Frieze presentation, Martinez renders his signature cast of raucous characters in an expressionistic style marked by vibrant colors and humor.

Across this spectrum of Filipino and diasporic artists, Silverlens casts a reflective lens to the cultural, economic, and ideological influence of California and its exports. Silverlens’ thoughts are with everyone impacted by the fires across Los Angeles.

Pacita Abad (b. 1946, Batanes, Philippines - d. 2004, Singapore) is known for her large-scale quilted trapunto paintings characterized by vibrant color and accumulated materials. Marked by vivid colors and intricate materials, her expansive paintings span a broad spectrum of themes, drawn in form and concept from a number of ethnic traditions of craft and thought. From portraying tribal masks and social scenes to intricate underwater landscapes and abstract forms, Abad's work transcended borders.

In 2023, Abad was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at The Walker Art Center, which traveled later to SFMOMA. The exhibition will then travel to MoMA PS1 and Art Gallery Ontario in 2024–2025. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the National Museum, Jakarta, Indonesia; Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, The Museum of Philippine Art, Manila; Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila; Bhirasri Museum of Modern Art, Bangkok, Thailand; Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore; The National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; and the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston, among others. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including: Beyond the Border: Art by Recent Immigrant, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Asia/ America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art, a traveling exhibition organized by the Asia Society, New York; Olympiad of Art, National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, Korea; 2nd Asian Art Show, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan; and La Bienal de Habana, Havana, Cuba.

Keka Enriquez (b. 1962, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in San Francisco, California) is a distinguished contemporary artist celebrated for her experimental and expressionistic paintings. Influenced by the Neo-expressionist movement, Enriquez’s work is characterized by textured brushstrokes, bold colors, and innovative form. Renowned for her exploration of domestic interiors, traditionally the domain of women, Enriquez subverts the masculine art movement to delve into the psychological and social dimensions of home. Through her manipulation of pigment, texture, and surface, she retrieves and reshapes the multi-layered experience of the homescape while contemplating the significance of painting as a whole. After twenty-five years of working within her San Francisco community, Enriquez returned to the art world in 2023. A showcase in 2024 will unveil a series of new oil on canvas paintings highlighting the evolution of her practice.

Enriquez embarked on her artistic journey in the 1980s under the mentorship of Roberto Chabet, widely acclaimed as the father of conceptual art in the Philippines. The artist graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of the Philippines. She has exhibited her work in the Philippines, the United States, England, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. In 1994, she was a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Award. Under a grant from UNESCO, she obtained her Masters degree in Fine Arts at the Norwich School of Art and Design, England in 1995.

Kawayan de Guia (b. 1979 Baguio City, Philippines; lives and works in Baguio City) is an artist and curator whose practice spans painting, installation, and sculpture. His artworks use indigenous and colonial artifacts, playfully transforming them into lavish and often ironic critiques of consumerism, global trade and the impact of the American occupation of the Philippines.

De Guia draws upon a wide array of Filipino material culture including Jeepneys, Dangwa buses, jukeboxes, torpedoes, and Ifugao rice gods. By juxtaposing rem- nants of differing periods, meanings and methods of production, de Guia unfolds the precarious narratives in which these objects come into being, and how they shape the complex social and political.

In 2007, he received the prestigious Ateneo Art Award for his exhibition Incubator, which paid homage to his many artistic forebears. In 2012, the artist initiated AX(iS) Art Project, a biannual festival that engages curators and contemporary artists with local com- munities and artisans. Across five days, participants travel by bus along the Halsema highway between Baguio and Bontoc in northern Luzon, creating site- specific works that responded to the changing cultural fabric of the region. In 2014, he participated in Markets of Resistance, a collaborative art project that allowed members of the public to barter for artworks. De Guia’s De Liberating a Fall (2014) consisted of a large-scale Statue of Liberty mounted above Baguio City Public Market. The work interrogates the ‘liberating’ force of capitalism and the economic impacts of globalization on domestic workers and regional trade.

Pow Martinez (b. 1983, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Manila) is a Filipino artist known for his expressionistic style of painting, blending bold colors with demonic, mutant-like characters to create compelling canvases. Often resembling a beautiful nightmare, Martinez combines the mundanities of everyday life with elements of pop culture, resulting in darkly humorous works depicting society’s overconsumption. Martinez is a recipient of the 2010 Ateneo Art Award for his exhibition 1 Billion Years at West Gallery, Philippines. He exhibits internationally and has worked with different media, from painting to sound. His recent exhibitions include State of Flux at Silverlens New York; City Prince/sses at Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Art Jakarta 2019 with Silverlens and ROH Projects; 50 Years in Hollywood at Pinto Art Museum in New York; Art Basel Hong Kong 2019 with Silverlens; WXXX, West Gallery, Manila. Martinez has also held a number of solo shows in major galleries in Manila, the most recent of which is Pow Martinez (2024) at Silverlens Manila. Early in 2022, Martinez had his first solo exhibition in Madrid entitled Underground Spiritual Unit at Galeria Yusto/Giner. In 2018, he had a solo exhibition in Indonesia titled Aesthetic Police, as an outcome of his month-long residency program at OPQRStudio in Bandung.