To Be Continued... Chabet's Works on Display

“Cargo and Decoy” as displayed at the Lasalle College of Arts’ Institute of Contemporary Arts in Singapore.

Artist Roberto Chabet’s year-long exhibition comes a full circle as it returns to the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).

The final installation of Chabet’s celebration of 50 years of pioneering contemporary art opened at the CCP on January 19 and will run until March 31.  The exhibition, titled “To Be Continued,” is a landmark survey exhibition of the artist’s plywood works as they were first presented in Singapore’s Institute of Contemporary Art at the La Salle College of the Arts a year ago.  Among the highlights of the exhibition are Chabet’s plywood installations as “Russian Paintings” (1984) and “Cargo and Decoy” (1989) as well as Chabet’s “Bakawan” (1974) closed-door installation, his ten-year series of large collages “China Collages” (1980-1990), his “Apple Painting Lesson” (1983) which is a collaboration with some 40 young artists, and his latest installation “Day and Night” (2011).    

An artist, a teacher, and a curator, Chabet is known for his plywood constructions set in geometric and abstract artistry in juxtaposition with ordinary objects that could be found in everyday life.  His love affair with the plywood as a medium started in the 1970s when he started using the material for his kinetic sculptures.  A decade later, Chabet started adapting the material to painting.  The way he integrates other elements and items with the plywood board material lends a curiosity-sparking and stimulating appeal to his art.  For the mark that he has made in Philippine art, he has been recognized with awards such as the Republic Cultural Heritage Award and the Araw ng Maynila Award for Visual Arts in 1972 and the CCP Centennial Award of honors for the Arts in 1998.

Chabet is an Architecture graduate from the University of Sto. Tomas and has spent over thirty years teaching at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts as well as in other artist-run locales in the metropolis.  Chabet’s “To Be Continued” installation can be viewed at the CCP Main Gallery.  For more information about this exhibition, interested parties can call the CCP at 832-1125 loc 1505 or 1506. 

Photo:  culturalcenter.gov.ph