Provenance: Provenance: Denisa Reyes Collection

ABOUT THE WORK

Filipino-Chinese abstractionist Lao Lianben’s painting career spans over forty years. He took his art studies at the University of the East, where was deeply influenced by his mentor, the revered artist Florencio B. Concepcion. Since his early years as an artist, he was already committed to pursuing abstraction, winning awards and gaining local and international acclaim along the way. In 1976, Lao became a recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. He also received the 1983 Mobil Art Awards for Earth and the Alumni Award from the University of the East. Lao continues in contributing immensely to Philippine contemporary art, widely known for his use of indigenous materials for his works and for his explorations on the properties of traditional painting materials. He developed a distinct abstract style influenced by the New Age movement often associated with the hippie culture of the late 1960s. Also drawing inspiration from Chinese art, his monochromatic oeuvre reflects its aesthetic, as well as East Asian spiritual and philosophical themes. Often linked to the Zen meditative brushwork of the Chinese and Buddhist images, his works display delicate, minimalist imagery with an atmospheric quality. His later works also evoke the principles of haiku poetry. Thematic idioms and subject matters of familiar settings, even if repeated from time to time, are still refreshing to the eye, through Lao’s creative playfulness and sense of spontaneity. This 1997 piece titled In Silence is among his works that are marked by quietude, reflecting mindfulness instead of unfolding narratives. Masterfully skilled in rendering visual subtlety and silence through his controlled use of color and brushwork, he also achieves an elegant, striking textural quality in his works as he applies the pigment mildly onto canvases. Outcomes would be abstractions of sparseness yet not devoid of meaningfulness, images of varying depth and openness—Lao leaves the viewer in making their own interpretations and valuations of his works as an act of personal engagement.