Charlie Co is Mamusa Gallery’s featured artist and the works of the Bacolod-based artist will be on show starting September 26 to October 22, 2022 in Iloilo City.
Charlie Co (b.1960) is a well-respected contemporary visual artist who graduated at the La Consolacion College, College of Fine Arts in 1984, and at the Philippine Women’s University, College of Fine Arts, in Manila in 1986.
Since then, Co became known for works with strong socio-realist themes rendered in expressionist and surrealist mode.
“The body of work in this collection speaks about my previous exhibitions about war.
It repeats the human folly of war and insane geo-political rhetoric—it seems like an endless cycle of conflicts. In a global stage it also affects the human race—the same circumstances have been seen for many decades, but with a different angle, different perspective, different light and shadows.”
Co has exhibited in numerous countries and has represented the Philippines in prestigious international events such as the Asian Modernism exhibition at the Japan Foundation Asian Cultural Centre in Tokyo and the 23rd Sao Paolo Biennial in Brazil. He received the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1990.
In the 1980s, he co-founded the Black Artists of Asia (BAA), a Bacolod-based group that helped bring public attention to the plight of sugarcane farmers or sakadas and other underprivileged sectors. Together with his peers, Charlie has been instrumental in encouraging growth among artist communities in the Visayas specifically through their art biennial initiative, the Visayan Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference or VIVA EXCON, which is now celebrating its 30th year.
In 2005, Charlie Co co-founded Orange Gallery in Bacolod City with Ben Lopue as a venue for young contemporary artists and curators. It has since expanded to Orange Project, the center of a thriving art district for visual arts, film and media-based practices.
The Ilonggo viewers can catch up with his works starting Monday.
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Featured Photo for this article is from the Facebook page of the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art, dated April 18, 2018.