Provenance: Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

ABOUT THE WORK

Capturing illusions for posterity is an age old goal in art. Olazo’s Permutations Series #12 depict a vast neutral field as an expansive backdrop, from which brittle lines float from the void. Olazo’s works never lose their filmy elegant quality. Permutations Series II fill the viewer’s field of vision, blocks out the distractions of the everyday world, and becomes the viewer’s environment. Olazo’s intention was to evoke, through a visually satisfying organization of pictorial elements, the magic of space and silence. It has been often thought that Olazo’s Permutations were made using silk screen process but they are actually hand drawn. Olazo’s concerns with simplicity and directness, layered elements and spatial development, as well as the meditative and contemplative, continue to be central in all of his works. Clarity of form that is neither entirely plastic nor pictorial, is seen in Olazo’s Permutation series. In 1972, he was awarded the coveted Thirteen Artists Award by the Cultural Centre of the Philippines (CCP). In the 1970s he developed his renowned Diaphanous series of paintings. He has held regular solo exhibitions at pioneering galleries such as the Luz Gallery, and Finale Art File and major institutions such as the CCP in the Philippines since 1974. He was recently included in the book 13 Painters for the 21st Century