Alarm and Chaos, a three-part exhibition of new works by pioneering Filipino conceptual artist Roberto Chabet, will open on March 31, 2009, at 6pm at West Gallery, West Avenue, Quezon City. The exhibition will be on view until April 27, 2009
The title ‘Alarm and Chaos’ is derived from Shakesperean plays, a stage instruction that calls for sudden mayhem. In Chabet’s exhibition, the three rooms of the gallery are turned into apprehensive scenes using familiar objects – harmonicas and clipboards, embedded or attached to almost nondescript, monochrome paintings and neon texts that reference philosopher Soren Kiekergaard, poet Rainier Maria Rilke and artist Alexander Rodchenko. The three installations, Fear and Trembling Alone Is Not Enough, For Beauty Is Nothing But The Beginning of Terror, and Who’s Afraid of Alexander Rodchenko?, explore the anxieties of modern life and the ruptures brought forth by the collisions of everyday images.
Chabet studied Architecture at the UST where he graduated in 1961. He had his first solo exhibition at the Luz Gallery in the same year. He was the founding Museum Director of the CCP from 1967 – 1970 where he initiated the first 13 Artists, giving recognition to young artists whose works ‘show a recentness, a turning away from the past and familiar modes of art-making’. He led the 70s conceptual art group Shop 6 and taught for over 30 years at the UP College of Fine Arts, where he espoused a kind of practice that gave precedence to idea over form. Since the 70s, he has also been organizing landmark exhibitions featuring vanguard works by young artists, many of whom are among the most active and innovative artists in Manila today. He was the recipient of the 1972 Republic Cultural Heritage Award, the 1972 Araw ng Maynila Award for the Visual Arts and the 1998 Centennial Honor for the Arts.
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