GLASS sculptor Ramon Orlina, bronze artist Michael Cacnio and abstract painter Carlo Magno make their take on the effervescent subject of light in the Lumina exhibit on Jan. 24 to Feb. 9 at Galleria Nicolas in Makati.
Orlina, a graduate of BS Architecture from UST, once again showed his unparalleled brilliance in capturing light in his celebrated sculptures.
Glass sculpture is a challenging craft. Through illumination and shadowing, the artist gives birth to masterpieces.
In this exhibit, he showcased his latest ploy on amber crystal highlighted by his mastery of light.
Carved in green glass, “The Archer” conveys an abstract figure of an archer through its extreme angular dimensions.
“All Together Now,” sculpted in moss green glass, presents a myriad of angles interconnected in the middle as if united by a single point of origin.
In “Sunrise in El Nido II,” Orlina portrayed a figurative representation of a sunrise over the horizons of El Nido in Palawan through the lights bouncing on the amber crystal medium.
Meanwhile, Cacnio focused on bronze and illuminated portions of his sculptures to endow them an ethereal glow.
“Meditation” shows a human figure sitting crossed-legged as if almost in the brink of enlightenment, with a blue light reflecting from within.
Abstractionist Magno, on the other hand, evoked light in his canvases through an interplay of colors and lines.
His oil-on-canvas “Lilac, Passages, and Undertone” showed a multitude of vertical lines in various colors.
Among the three, Orlina is the master of light for his glass sculptures.
The artist behind the QuattroMondial monument for the University’s 400th anniversary in 2011, Orlina was the first to carve figures out of glass blocks using methods such as cutting and grinding through the use of improvised instruments.
Orlina was awarded the Mr. F Prize in the 1999 Toyamura International Sculpture Biennale in Japan.
In 2000, he won the the grand prize for sculpture in the II International Biennale of Basketball in the Fine Arts in Spain.