Angelo Magno

Grace and Gestures Art Exhibit

Held Last December 2004 at the Art Elements Asian Gallery in SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City, Philippines.
Grace and Gestures
First solo exhibition
Art Elements Asian Gallery, December 2004

---Ikebana Series

by Angelo Magno----


Drawing is the nearest discipline I can relate to writing. We use the same materials such as paper and pencil in drawing and in writing. Sometimes we spontaneously write what is on our mind. This can be in the form of phrases, sentences or poetry. Poetry being one of the most disciplined but ironically one of the most expressive forms of writing. --o0o--

The process I have incorporated in this series is similar to creating poetry and writing by using our stream of consciousness and by the process of automatic writing. We write what is on our mind at the moment. In this case, we draw what we feel at the moment. These drawings seem to form some kind of foreign texts. Texts that may mean nothing at all but the movement of the lines convey intense emotions. --o0o--

I call this as the Ikebana series since the forms created by the impulse of drawing are similar to Ikebana arrangements. In the same way the creation has a touch of restrain. I did not fill the compositions with colors but attempted to create minimal compositions using oil pastel and pencil on paper. --o0o--

“The Zen master merely says: act and don't worry about it; what you do may be right or wrong, neither is bad. That is, from the universal point of view there is no right and wrong: these are values superimposed by society--the universe makes no distinctions or categories” – Zen Buddhism ---------o0000o-----------







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One looks at the work collected in Angelo Magno’s Grace and Gestures and sees an aesthetic flight.
The softest point of the pencil draws dark lines that seem to blur, but later turns into light,
filling the great white space-our feelings floating in the void.


Matched with the burst of the oil pastel, each flower burns and savors its moment. That is how the
artist renders his impression of beauty: each blooming is also an homage to all that is temporal and
painful. The more that one is attached, the more one suffers. Our eyes hold unshed tears.

There is a convergence of influences in this exhibition, all of which are positional and Japanese. They
range from ikebana (the art of flower arrangement), haiku (traditional poetry of three, measured lines), zendo (way of meditation), chinkon-koshin undo (the unity of mind and body).

Moreover, the artist is no stranger to the practice of the literary arts. He has used pencil and paper to draw the faintest element, which in writing could sometimes remain unexpressed, being the province
of the visual arts.

Finally, Angelo Magno has done his great duty of presenting the consolations of both writing and
drawing. Although they may be two different disciplines, two solitary acts that need to be sustained
in one’s stream of consciousness, he keeps his promise and fulfills it, showing us elegant poetry.

----(Text was written byJaime Dasca Doble)-------




Angelo Magno is a graduate of BA Art Studies from the University of the Philippines, Diliman Quezon City. He is now taking his Master in Fine Arts at the UP College of Fine Arts.