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“Beyond Gold: 51st Anniversary Retrospective of Romeo Gutierrez” a solo exhibition by Romeo Gutierrez is exhibited from April 06 – 30, 2023 at the NCCA Gallery. In April 2023, the NCCA Gallery is proud to present Filipino visual artist Romeo Gutierrez. Featuring a collection spanning five decades, Gutierrez’s Beyond Gold rounds out the artist’s principles and practice of “recording scenarios of a beginning, a creation, a naked truth and motion” as noted by Rene R. Salem in Philippine Panorama in 1976. Citations from the artist’s contemporaries – luminaries of the Philippine art scene – like essayist-critic Leonidas Benesa, art historian-professor Santiago Pilar, and National Artist for Visual Arts J. Elizalde Navarro are our signposts for our refreshed acquaintance with the visual, layered essays of Gutierrez through oil and acrylic. The overall calmness and temperance conveyed from the gathering of around 40 abstract and figurative works at the NCCA Gallery is a register of materials: Aside from using canvases as ground for oil and acrylic, Gutierrez also used other kinds of surfaces, or he diligently recreated simulations of textures and auras as graphic translations of his observations or aspirations in life. Virtually cosmological and spiritual, Gutierrez’s modernist and contemporary approaches may evoke scenes of personal meditations or social relationships, but his outputs significantly rely on the potent faculty of abstraction to facilitate the affordances for multiple and lithe interpretations. Through catering these modernist and contemporary pieces at the Beyond Gold exhibition of the NCCA Gallery, it is hoped that audiences will be aware of the importance of introspection in creating art and daily living. This retrospective is as a proposition that works of art are portals to our realization of the constant swing between our notions of transcendental beauty and the rare graces borne from irreplicable moments – ways of perceiving and understanding which are vital to our cultural sustenance. About the Artist |
The CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art embossed Gutierrez on its pages through the annotations of Santiago Pilar: He received his earliest recognition in 1965 when he won second prize at the UST annual competition. He won a certificate of merit in the Shell National Students Art Competition for Everyday, 1966, and third prize for Indication. He won first prize at the national painting competition sponsored by the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) and the Philippine Bible Society on the “Interpretation of a Passage from the Bible,” Job’s Agony, 1971. He received honorable mentions and second-best entry, AAP graphic competition, 1974; honorable mention for Ang Buhay (Life), Philippine Association of Printmakers Graphic Arts competition; finalist and third best entry, AAP painting competition, 1975.
Aside from Pilar’s chronicling of the artist, we take note of Gutierrez’s recognition made by NCCA ‘s Diwa ng Sining National Art Awards in 1994; the UST Outstanding Atelier Alumni 2016; and as finalist in the International Graphic Arts Biennial of Taiwan in 1993. The artist had 40 solo shows as of date. Gutierrez participated in several art exhibitions here and abroad: Taiwan, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Germany, UK (London), USA (NY, DC), and other European countries. Gutierrez has been featured through solo and group shows such as at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the National Museum of the Philippines, Lopez Museum and Library, Ayala Museum, and Luz Gallery. Aside from being part of museum collections, his other works were commissioned/acquired by several commercial institutions such as The Peninsula Manila, the Manila Diamond Hotel, and Solid Mills, Inc. He was a former Vice President and Board Member of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP). He and his works were featured in The Epiphany of Philippine Graphic Arts, 1982; Arts Philippines, 1993; Shell Reunion Artist (Book), 1993; CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Arts, 1995 & 2020; The Art Collectors Guidebook, 2005; Living in Art, 2010; and Artworks First Fifty Years, 1948-1998 by the AAP, 2011.
“Beyond Gold: 51st Anniversary Retrospective of Romeo Gutierrez” will run from 06 to 30 April 2023 at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Gallery located on the Ground Floor, NCCA Building, 633 General Luna St., Intramuros, 1002 Manila. The artists’ reception is on 11 April 2023, Tuesday at 3:00 pm.
For inquiries on visits, please contact the NCCA Gallery team at gallery@ncca.gov.ph or call (+63 2) 8527 2192 loc. 309 during office hours. NCCA Gallery hours are from Mondays to Thursdays, 9:00am-6:00pm, Fridays and Saturdays, 9:00am-3:00pm. @NCCAOffical #NCCAGallery #BeyondGold #RomeoGutierrez
