Our collaboration with Fedrigoni Asia arrived a couple of weeks ago. It’s an artbook / catalogue featuring the various special papers Fedrigoni offers.
All artworks contain or feature different paper elements.
This collaboration was made possible through our friends from Fedrigoni Asia. You can visit their facebook page here. Fedrigoni papers are distributed in the Philippines by Prestige Paper Products.
I finally bought Without Walls: A tour of Philippine Paintings at the turn of the millenium. It’s a survey of Philippine Contemporary Painting as represented by 73 leading Filipino artists.
Among those featured are Leo Abaya, Marcel Antonio, Andres Barrioquinto, Elmer Borlongan, Annie Cabigting, Charlie Co, Louie Cordero, Leslie de Chavez, Emmanuel Garibay, Nona Garcia, Geraldine Javier, Mark Justiniani, Yasmin Sison, Rodel Tapaya, Ronald Ventura and a host of other great artists.
Okay, let’s get this out of the way. Without Walls is without a doubt expensive. At PhP 3,500 (it could go as high as 4,000 depending on where you buy it) and clocking in at around 270-plus pages, it may be beyond the casual art lover’s budget.
But consider that there may not be many copies of this book lying around. A google search of Winrum Publishing yielded very little information about the publisher itself. And since it’s a Philippine publication (an in full color hardcover no less), I think it’s safe to assume that the print run isn’t all that high.
So, I took the plunge and emptied my wallet.
It took months before I finally decided to buy the book. But beyond its steep price, the value of Without Walls as an artbook is certainly without question. The book collects all of my most favorite Filipino painters in one volume. The layout is clean and competent and the reproductions are also of high quality. It’s comparable to international artbooks, in both packaging and content. Content being the biographical essays and reproductions of the artists works.
So is it worth it? Well, I think it is. This book finally collects all this high caliber talent in one volume.
Now, if we can only get one for sculptural works.
Taken from a Philippine Star article: Without Walls: A Tour of Philippine Paintings at the Turn of the Millennium is now available at Tin-Aw Art Gallery, Finale Art File, Silverlens Gallery, West Gallery, The Drawing Room Gallery, Manila Contemporary Gallery, Paseo Art Gallery and select branches of Fully Booked.
I wouldn’t have spotted James Jean’s Rebus at National Bookstore Quezon Avenue if I had not been checking out a tattooed girl at the Art Books section. But when I finally paid attention to the books in front of me, there it was: Rebus was finally on sale. Which is something of a minor shocker to me because I thought this book wasn’t going on sale for a month.
So I didn’t think twice and I grabbed the book and took it to the cashier.
Published by Chronicle Books (a wonderful publisher of beautiful books I might add), Rebus is a retrospective of James Jean’s work from 2001 to 2011. It contains selected artwork from all his other books, as well images found in his blog. As a survey of his work, it’s as comprehensive as it gets. The book is divided in several sections each enclosed within a specific timeframe in his career.
The book covers the following body of work:
If you’ve been paying attention to James Jean’s body of work as well buying all of his books (as I have), Rebus treads familiar territory. Except for his latest and more expressive paintings, the book reprints much of the artwork found in his previous books. Although it must be said that some of the artworks found in Process Recess 1 benefit from having been reprinted in a much larger size (the first Process Recess book was too small at only half a bond paper).
A James Jean book is always well designed and it’s the little details that make it pleasurable to look at. Rebus is no exception with the edges of the pages covered in ruby ink. Beautiful. So all in all, the book is again a must have for any fan and the reasonable price tag for an artbook of this size sweetens the deal.
Hey Oso! 