Art Fair Philippines 2015

To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it. –Osho

I love February. Not only is it the love month, it's also the National Arts Month, and of course my birth month! So basically a lot of things going on around this period. To kick things off, my friend and I went to the Art Fair Philippines 2015 at the Link.

The Link is a retail and car park building located along Makati Avenue, beside Landmark and right across Greenbelt. The 6th and 7th floors of the parking space have been converted into galleries. It was Friday evening when Arian and I went to the exhibit, a sort of cultural diversion from our otherwise corporate life. The Art Fair featured works of various artists–Ramon Orlina, Norberto Roldan, Victor Balanon–mostly people I don't know, whose works I don't fully understand.

There was this one time when Arian and I argued on how to view a painting. We were standing in front of this abstract oil on canvas. We could not figure it out. Then she said, "Kelangan kasi tinitingnan siya from afar para magets mo." (You have to look at it from afar.) Then I said, "Hindi, dapat nagssquint ka." (No, you have to squint your eyes when you look at it.) We both sounded ridiculous.

To be honest, I'm no art connoisseur. I don't know the proper way to view art pieces, if there is any proper way. But that does not mean I don't appreciate it, as a matter of fact, I do. We could all use a bit of beauty in our lives. And being in the fair was quite refreshing, inspiring even. To make something out of nothing is a wonderful gift. And am glad that the art fair, which is just one of so many, provides a platform for artists to showcase their creativity, express their deepest thoughts and emotions, and more importantly provide motivation and inspiration to aspiring artists and art lovers.

So I tick the art fair off my bucket list. But this is definitely not going to be my last.

Art pieces from top: "I Am Seeing Things" painting by Elmer Borlongan; a painting in the "White" collection of Marc Aran Reyes; painting by Jaime Roque; bottom left: "Defeaning Silence" painting by Keiye Miranda; bottom right: art installation

Photos by Arian Magsino