CELEBRATED CEBUANO ARTIST EXHIBITS AT NY PHIL. CONSULATE

By Marivir R. Montebon

It is to be the sixth of a series of exhibits on September 24 to October 5, 2012 by Cebu-based artist Celso Pepito, this time with his better half, artist Fe Madrid Pepito.  Cultural Confluence VI, is almost like coming full circle from Asia, Europe, and now the US.  The exhibit will be at the Philippine Center Gallery on 5^th Avenue in Manhattan aims to show Filipinos who have been living out of the country, images of life in the Philippines today while at the same time affording them the chance to imbibe snippets of American art and culture thereby giving them a deeper perspective of their individual artistic direction.

The art exhibit is organized in New York by OSM!, the online magazine for awesome global citizens,  the 5^th Avenue Lions Club, and the Philippine Consulate,  and ArtPortal Cebu.

The exhibiting artists will also hold an art workshop for interested participants in a separate venue which will be announced at a much later date.

The first of the series of Cultural Confluence exhibitions was organized in Cebu in September 2010 at SM Art Center under the initiative of ArtPortal Cebu.  The convergence saw a meeting of the minds of artists from Cebu, Davao, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Paris.

Pepito recalls, “It created a sense of unity beyond diversity, and at the same time, helped promote the Filipinos’ positive values and traditions.”

In March 2011, the Cultural Confluence II was brought to the Davao Museum of History and Ethnography through the initiatives of Welehito Pepito, Arnel Villegas and Josie Tionko. It featured a broad regional spectrum of painting represented by artists from Manila, Cebu, Davao and France. At stake at that exhibit were issues of identity, memory and cultural shifts.

In an effort to seek international exposure, Remy Rault, a French artist presently based in Cebu brought Cultural Confluence III to Paris in April 2011, putting up a show at the Espace Le Socle, le Establissement Culturel Solidaire. The exhibit caught the attention of the Parisian viewers, thus inspiring Rault to put up Cultural Confluence IV at the same venue in October 2011.

Cultural Confluence V at the JCentre Mall in January 2012 saw a reunion of the artists involved in the first exhibition plus many more artists from Cebu who came on board to showcase their individuality while still working in the spirit of unity and cooperation.