Nursery of Curiosities: A Solo Exhibit by Nasser Lubay All Set to Open on May 15 at Arte Pintura

Wazzup Pilipinas!

The Artist Playground, Arte Pintura and Talent Factory Incorporated proudly present NURSERY OF CURIOSITIES -- A SOLO EXHIBIT BY NASSER LUBAY.

Arte Pintura Gallery is located at the G/F The Address at Wack Wack, Wack Wack Road, Mandaluyong City, and is al set to open on May 15, 2016.

An interesting highlight of the exhibit is the world premiere of “Nursery of Curiosities – The Theme,” an original music written by award-winning composer Jesse Lucas.

A specially-printed catalogue of "Nursery of Curiosities" will also be launched to accompany the exhibit.

Curated by Philip Almazan Paraan, “Nursery of Curiosities” will run until May 31.

EXHIBITION NOTES

After making significant strides in the art scene highlighted by winning runner-up honors in an international art competition, Nasser Lubay finds the ripe moment to present a cohesive array of his works to this day. This first solo exhibition marks an important point in Lubay’s art making practice as he puts together a seminal collection, a survey reflecting his development as an artist throughout the years. In this suite of work, he foments the idea of irreversible growth and germination. Intently, he underlines such beginnings in the history of life, such formative stages and natural process of growing, of being and becoming. In this instance, art like in nature, ripens or demonstrates fruition over necessary periods of time.

His images are often billowing vistas of narrative laden, layered images if not singularly amorphous images that bloom with flourishing details and other suggestive elements. Subjects and themes whether inspired by Mayan cultures, animals, buildings, wallpapers, real or imagined or just products of quotidian thoughts and everyday living, all find connection in nature and natural processes. Intuitive creativity is the wisdom of this engagement and artworks were conjured and visually phrased in images that can be fantastical and patently surreal as pastiche and veiled interpretations of reality, partly guided in form by intellect and feelings.

Immediately, Lubay shows interest in growing things and biotic process as he proffers the idea of sense of growth, creative commitment, promise and potential, beginnings and man’s inborn and inherent instincts and focus on lives or alive or even what men has created to ensure his survival. The seed and anything plant like as the core metaphor of beginnings, nascent phases of things leading to their graceful trajection ---- they have nowhere to go but to shoot upward and grow. It can be also be an allusion to the creative mind’s inherent character to unfold its limitless potential.

For the artist, growth, change and mutability are a cosmic reality and in fact change and evolution are necessary and inherent processes of human experience. Not just humans but everything characteristically grows as living matters. Likewise, growth extends beyond physical and material but the in the sphere of ideas. Men (and women) have the power to create things as well as part of his nature. As a result, Lubay not just tackles and frames this reality but at some point they do reflect on things created in the past and modern constructs, inanimate objects and man-made realities perhaps created now or earlier that continue to form our environment and dictates our lives.

Likewise, our understanding and relationships continue to be ever complex in form yet reveal imprints and hints of past ancient wisdom and the processes it went and will go through. As a matter of awareness, he turns to personal experiences and memory as aestheticizing passages and responses to convey his art and how he wants pursue his view and feelings of things and the callow delights as well as special capacity to create images and convey the world in a unique and personal way. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

I live in a new world where it is surreal and where dreams, fantasies are the reality. I adhere to the thought that everything is as what we imagine it to be. My reflections in canvas reveal some imaginings and ruminations which meld with reality triggered by my past and ongoing experiences, and they have such personal weight that I hope can affect others who encounter my works. I am inclined to paint my perpetually evolving encounters and re-imagined moments, frustrations, exaggerations that I try to compress and expand in my reflexively conjured images. My paintings are also of other people and our environment, the longings and aspirations with such hope and intent that these create magic and fruitful engagement in this dazed, often conflicted human environment suffused with suffering, agony as well as love.

My art is a new semi-abstraction created through psychedelic processes but as I explore my skills and sensibilities, I am interested in the melding of traditional aesthetics and contemporary visual outcomes. I allow my mind to wander freely and unceasingly, even to get lost in the moment, flux of imagination and small epiphanies until they produce visual marks that yield their own resonance and sense of meaning.

Nursery of Curiosities is an introduction to my imaginary world as a visual poet of my time. We all have these little stories that have powerful meanings, through these, I try to capture and embrace the feelings and ideas so that I may be able to share to everyone the experience. In most cases it heals me and I hope it does the same with everyone else. In this installment are my pieces being born, to somehow share a lighter perspective about life. To hopefully inspire us to explore more possibilities and to drive our soul from what it is not and believe that this is where it should be.

ARTIST BIO

Visual artist Nasser Lubay is the only Filipino to have won at the prestigious Celeste International Art Prize by way of his outstanding work in 2009 titled " Rebirth. "In the same year, " Rebirth " was exhibited at the 2nd Animamix Biennial at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan.

Nasser also participated in the 2010 Ondarte International Artist Residency in Akumal, Mexico.

Upon returning to the Philippines, Nasser was chosen as one of Jollibee’s Young Ambassadors, cited for his achievements in the Arts.

In 2015, Nasser designed the interactive visuals in the critically acclaimed performance art production, ‘Ginugunita Kita’ staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

With the formidable education he got in mechanical engineering and multimedia arts at the Mapua Institute of Technology in Manila, Nasser has also collaborated with some of the most notable artists in the Philippines including photographers, composers, dancers and actors.

Nasser is a co-founder of the Artist Playground, an arts and performance company and currently holds the post of Creative Services Manager for The Talent Factory Incorporated, a respected entertainment company in the Philippines. 

For further details, please check: www.nasserlubay.com; www.artistplayground.ph; or call 0915-5610987.