2025
Oil on canvas panel
16 x 20"

i can't even read my own handwriting sometimes

2024
Oil on canvas
60 x 84 inches

2024
Oil on canvas
9 x 12 inches

Part of the No Name Show booth at Gravity Art Space, Manila, Dec 2024.

2024
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 inches

Part of the Drawing Room booth at Access Bangkok Art Fair, Thailand, from Dec 5-7 2024.

2024
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 inches

Part of the Drawing Room booth at Access Bangkok Art Fair, Thailand, from Dec 5-7 2024.

2024
Oil and acrylic on canvas
10 paintings, 9 x 12 inches each

Part of the Weather-world show at Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong, from Nov 16 2024-Jan 11 2025.

2024
Oil on canvas
66 x 88 inches

Part of the Weather-world show at Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong, from Nov 16 2024-Jan 11 2025.

2024
Oil on canvas
12 x 42 inches each

group show at Modeka Creative Space, Oct 5-26, 2024. Featuring works by Matina Partosa, Gia Luistro, and Art Tavera. Curated by Gerardo Tan.

How to resist the genericity of a trope like abstract art? When the term painting is brought up, for a lot of folks this trope easily comes to mind – a messy array of colored pigments spread and splattered, slathered on thickly across a canvas ground. The image is that of a painting, itself innocuous enough to happily hang in a hotel lobby or by the landing of a stairwell of a well-appointed house or above a bespoke cushy couch. Treating painting this way, one may fail to realize the process and thinking involved in making them beyond their just looking reticently cool and pretty. But if they do look so, the paintings themselves are blameless.

Gerardo Tan, with an eye and a sensibility of a painter, pierces through that veneer and gathers his observation through this show of three young painters

“Their works caught my attention in my regular gallery visits. I thought their works will resonate with each other if put together in a show particularly their good handling of paint and image with three distinct approaches to abstraction, i.e. Gia Luistro’s malleable treatment of paint resulting in some kind of ambiguous imagery that oscillates between figuration and abstraction; Art Tavera’s energetic paint passages that gives his abstractions strong physical presence in contrast to Matina Partosa’s luminous surfaces that can refer to translucent layers of digital images.”

text taken from the Modeka Creative Space post.

55 x 60 inches
feather, dried basil cuttings, money tree leaves, dried butterfly pea flower, dried sampaguita, spray paint and acrylic paint on the artist’s studio window curtains

This installation is a tribute to my first forays into gardening and cultivating an artistic practice in the first space of my own. It’s been said that the studio is the artist’s brain. In mine —which is hardly more than a small room— the balcony window is its focal point, the interface between the outside and the inside. Opening and closing the window and drawing the curtains allows me to regulate the movement of light, air, and energy. Caring for the plants on the balcony requires closer attention to the daily shifts in weather, humidity, and exposure. There is a quality of heightened sensitivity created by the demands of sustaining both plant life and an artistic practice. When others come into the studio they often leave things behind —the basil was a gift from a dear friend. Otherwise they leave mementos or memories. Their presence imprints on the space. I wanted to create a work of devotion to my studio, my garden, and my friends with this in mind. Interfacing with these seemingly external things has had a deep impact on my interior life.

2024
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 inches

Part of the "Recent Works" group show at Modeka Creative Space, Oct 5-26 2024.

2024
Oil on canvas
18 x 24 inches

Part of the "Recent Works" group show at Modeka Creative Space, Oct 5-26 2024.

2024
Oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches

2024
Oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches

2024
Oil and acrylic on canvas
54 x 72 inches