Last Monday 17 January 2011, Enrico Manlapaz mounted a show entitled RECYCLING BUBBLES at the Main Gallery of Sining Kamalig located on Level 4 of the Gateway Mall, Araneta Center, Cubao, Quezon City.

“The show features paintings which I conceived and composed, later on painted by two highly talented emerging artists AVERIL PARAS and ZALDY GARRA. It is my homage to Pardo De Leon.” Cited Enrico.

The show runs till 05 February 2011.

Pardo De Leon, an appreciation by Enrico Manlapaz

In the early 1990s, I marvelled at the paintings of Pardo De Leon, specifically two 8ft x 8ft ones which came from an exhibition in Russia which she eventually brought to my house to be mounted and resotred after having stayed in customs for nearly a year. The two paintings, Greco Christ and Stitced Frog, stayed in my dining room for almost seven years. She remains top in my list of artists up to now.

It was also during those times that I learned how to paint. In August 1992, I had my first and only solo exhibition at the West Gallery, after having been “educated informally” under Stella Rojas, Elmer Borlongan, R. M. de leon and Francesca Enriquez, I ceased to paint regularly after that show, for very personal reasons.

I am currently reviving the concepts behind the compositions which to my mind have guided Pardo De Leon in producing her works in the early 1990s. These paintings included in Recycling Bubbles were recently done in my residence in Antipolo by two emerging painters Averil Paras and Zaldy Garra. They are what you may call artworks which I personally “art-directed” (conceived, composed and eventually supervised).

They heavily appropriate from googled photographs and Irving Penn’s Flowers (Pardo De Leon’s favourite source in the early 1990s).

Incidentally, Pardo De Leon happens to be nicknamed “Bubbles.”