Romulo Olazo, Diaphanous B - XVII, 1978, Oil on canvas, 152.5 x 122 cm

Valentine Willie Fine Art - VWFA 1st Floor,17 Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru 59100 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (city map) Send E-mail tel +60 3-2284 23 48 www.vwfa.net

Romulo Olazo: The Truth is Still in the Beautiful. This exhibition will open concurrently with Jonathan Olazo's Memoir at the Project Room
21 Jun - 14 Jul 2007

press release
Valentine Willie Fine Art brings to Malaysia for the first time the works of senior Filipino artist Romulo Olazo (b. 1934). A deeply accomplished painter and printmaker, Olazo's career has spanned over forty years and a wide range of artistic approaches, earning him a significant reputation in the Philippines art scene. It is, however, long overdue that his unique contribution to art, and especially abstract art, should be recognised and properly considered outside the Philippines and in the Southeast Asian region.

The exhibition "Romulo Olazo: The Truth is Still in the Beautiful" brings together over fifty works from different periods of his career, including large major paintings and smaller paintings as well as a selection of works on paper - prints, watercolours, pastels, ink and charcoal drawings. The exhibition explores Olazo's approach to form - through his famous Diaphanous and Permutation series of abstract paintings but also in his lifelong study of the female form and the local landscape in drawings and watercolours.

Running concurrently with this exhibition in our Project Room, is Jonathan Olazo's "Memoir" - an installation of works on paper, objects and text made as homage to the work of his father, and a reflection on his own experience and responses as "a painter's son". A graduate of the University of the Philippines, Jonathan Olazo (b. 1969) is one of Manila's most daring young artists, recognized for the profundity of his investigations into the issues of art-making and its meaning.

There is an accompanying catalogue to "The Truth is Still in the Beautiful", with essays by Victoria T Herrera, and curators Jonathan Olazo and Beverly Yong. Meanwhile, Lena Cobangbang writes on "Memoir".