Courtesy of Art Impresario
The Here & Now & Now & Then exhibition is open only until May 25.
There’s no clear indication of what the space used to be. Cavernous and silent, its surfaces are worn and unassuming: cement walls, exposed electrical wiring, remnants of partitions long removed. It’s a rave haven in Berlin, but it could have been a storage warehouse in Cebu. It’s an office gutted mid-renovation, an abandoned apartment, a fitness gym devoid of its patrons. Now, for a brief moment, it holds Here & Now & Now & Then, a group exhibition featuring 19 artists, curated by Nilo Ilarde.
As the exhibition statement notes, the term art space has long been treated as a neutral descriptor: functional, yet sometimes forgettable. Curator Ilarde has always been attuned to context, not simply as backdrop, but as co-conspirator. Known for allowing art to “speak for itself,” here he listens closely to the environment as well. In choosing an unfinished, unpolished floor of a corporate tower, he invites visitors into an ecosystem where art and architecture negotiate meaning in tandem. The context doesn’t complete the work, nor does it explain it. But it is allowed, deliberately, to affect it.
In Jose Santos III’s “Pheromones” installation becomes an infestation as the space allows his resin curachas to crawl into a hole in a wall, creating a skin-crawling visual experience. Marco Santos’ untitled works integrate with the light coming into the space. During the day, sunlight filters through manipulated acrylic sheets, casting the space in liquid gold. At night, the same materials catch ambient light like falling stars, meteor-like flashes suspended in mid-air.
Other artists dialogue with memory and material. Ilarde’s own piece, “faulty landscape” is made from a pile of used paint tubes spilling out of a crate: a visual archive of effort, exhaustion, and resolve. Oca Villamiel is an obsessive collector of natural ephemera, with “Traces” preserving a decade’s worth of fishbones in glass vitrines, and whale bones replacing marble in his statue of “David.” Juan Alcazaren proposes marriage through a ½ carat diamond (although the band is a steel basketball ring, still attached to a wooden backboard.)
In the end, the show doesn’t ask for resolution. If anything, it suggests the opposite. There’s humor, curiosity, and generosity to the way these works coexist with each other and with the building without excessive reasoning or judgment. Instead, they wait. For light to shift. For a viewer to pause. For meaning to emerge in the cracks.
In the curatorial statement, artist and writer Cocoy Lumbao Jr. says, “This reimagining of space reflects a desire to move beyond institutional constraints and toward more inquisitive, fluid ways of engaging with art. Here, the art space is not merely a backdrop—it is an active participant, a framework that shapes and is shaped by the practices it hosts, and by the multitude of ideas that come together.”
More than a conventional exhibition, Here & Now & Now & Then feels like an active conversation: between work and site, past and future, absence and accumulation. It reminds us that art-making is not always about resolution, but about the willingness to inhabit the in-between.
Presented by Marco Santos, Teddy Catuira, Bianca Bauer, Nilo Ilarde, Pete Jimenez and Oca Villamiel, Here & Now & Now & Then is available to view until May 25, 2025 at Podium 3, Tower II, RCBC Plaza, Makati.
