Consider your September art calendar booked

This September, not even the rain and relentless floods (fueled by a lack of flood control) can wash away the colors of creativity and the persistence of the local art community. Across galleries, museums, and even a historical hotel lobby, artists are finding new ways to look at familiar surroundings. Here are the exhibitions worth braving the rains this month.

Anna Bautista, “Undergrowth” at León Gallery International

Sept. 10 to 24

Under Bautista’s skillful paintbrush, unassuming flora are arranged in the coded language of Victorian floriography. Always one to comment on social phenomena, she fashions petals from documents such as contracts, employment papers, and birth certificates—seemingly ordinary papers that can make or break a life.

Through these, the artist pushes past the surface of pretty and into a call for better civic responsibility.

“Beyond Existing Forces” at Modeka Art

Sept. 10 to Oct. 3

Curated by visual artist Christina Lopez, “Beyond Existing Forces” brings together Ally Tresvalles, Auspicious Family, Diego Aquilizan, Herald Stalin, Nash Cruz and Shara Francisco in an all-video and moving-image presentation across sound, projection, collage, animation and installation.

From Cruz’s layered footage and Aquilizan’s contemplative projections to Tresvalles’ video documentation of buntal weaving, the exhibition considers image-making as a way of sensing and building new worlds.

“Behind the Lens: Cultural and Border Crossings, 1950–2000s” at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila

Aug. 6 to Oct. 11

Bringing together photographs by larger-than-life writer F. Sionil Jose and photojournalists George Gascon, Romeo Gacad, and Xyza Cruz Bacani, the show traces human encounters across borders and decades.

Presented in collaboration with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the exhibit asks what a photograph can reveal about the person behind the camera, as well as the world they witnessed.

Bitto, “flower | bird | wind | moon” at Vinyl on Vinyl Gallery

Sept. 5

The title comes from the Japanese idiom “kachō fūgetsu,” also a translation for the “beauty of nature.”

Bitto plays with unconventional landscapes, and while the forms at first seem organic, many turn out to be artificial, as a closer look reveals plastic balloons over a field of flowers or deflated in front of a still-life.

“Dark Matter” at Fort & Tailler, New World Makati Hotel

Sept. 12

Fort & Tailler opens its artisanal showroom for a group show featuring Richard Buxani, Robert Besana, Allen Sanchez, Marlon Asparen, Kent Fortugaleza, and Lucien, kickstarting the beginning of a collaboration with The Monarch and a rotating selection of art and sculptures—set to become a permanent part of the showroom.

“Echoes of Horizon: Art in Resonance” at The Peninsula Manila

Sept. 4 to Oct. 30

Curated by Vinyl on Vinyl founder Gaby dela Merced, the sprawling show brings together National Artist Arturo Luz, Ramon Orlina, Gerardo Tan, Demosthenes Campos, Dennis Bato, Geremy Samala, and Michael Orlina across the historical hotel lobby.

“My background is in street art, which is known for its site specificity,” the curator continues. And it makes sense, as each work converses with the hotel space well, from Luz’s towering “Anito” sculpture close to the check-in counters to Samala’s ecstatic frames flanking the locations where the Pen’s iconic tapestries usually stay.

“Holding Structures, Soft Bodies” at Gajah Gallery Manila

Sept. 12 to Oct. 11

Gajah always has fascinating programming, and this three-person exhibition of Southeast Asian artists should be no different.

Indonesian artist Jemana Murti works in technology—you might’ve seen his bright-blue works at Art Fair PH, which bring Yves Klein to mind, though Murti’s are 3D-printed. Then there’s Kayleigh Goh, who explores the inner dimensions of healing through painting and spatial experience, while Singaporean multidisciplinary artist Sarah Choo Jing explores the dynamics of urban life.

Lesley Anne Cao, “Atlas in a bright room” at Artinformal

Sept. 9 to Oct. 9

In the small gallery at Artinformal, Cao looks at animals as they appear on paper currency from different parts of the world, both in and out of circulation. Through collecting, cropping, erasure, and presentation, she reconsiders how we understand the established systems of knowledge that circulate in our natural and visual world.

Lou Lim, “Mending – An Opening” at Finale Art File

Sept. 10 to Oct. 3

Lim’s exhibition moves between personal and collective experiences of healing, as well as the physical, spiritual, private, and public dimensions of repair. Lim questions whether mending can ever truly return something to its original form, or open up to “what it could now be?”

Mark Andy Garcia, “Mga Pahiwatig ng Isang Pintor” at West Gallery

Sept. 10 to Oct. 10

Known for his distinctive style of intuitive mark-making and heavy impasto textures, Garcia’s upcoming exhibition seems to hint at a show that signals a deeper world of the painter’s psyche.

MM Yu, “sum of its parts” at Silverlens Manila

Aug. 29 to Oct. 3

Yu continues her signature dripping technique, treating individual canvases as components that can be separated, flipped, and rearranged. She also presents “Untitled Pantone,” a collection of 500 pictures with elements from various urban environments.

Tosha Albor, “Invasive Species” at Artinformal

Sept. 9 to Oct. 9

Filipino-American artist Albor explores plants and their colonial histories of displacement, from the Rhododendron ponticum introduced to the UK to Opuntia cacti in Spain.

Zean Cabangis, “Greatest Species” at Artinformal

Sept. 9 to Oct. 9

Cabangis continues his practice of layering fragments of places he has passed into new imagery.

Construction cranes, billboards, towers, and plants become caught between development and collapse, as he “represents how landscapes register to him as information, as images, as imprints, and as feelings,” writes James Tana in the exhibition notes.

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