Galerie Stephanie presents solo exhibitions by women artists for National Arts Month

By Gabrielle Gonzales and Marz Aglipay

On view until Feb. 23 at the modern and contemporary art gallery, Galerie Stephanie, are the works of two visual artists, Eugenia Alcaide’s “Layers” and Ev Yu’s “The Wiggle Room.”

In “Layers,” Alcaide traces the contours of one’s interior landscape and untangles the complexities of identity. Her precise line artwork casts intricate and ever-shifting networks of shadows, suspended in layers within lightboxes. Each gossamer layer, a patchwork of patterns, textures, and color, gradates toward something more concrete, more palpable, something with a core. Yet, its outlines remain elusive, escaping the viewer with the slightest movement, the slightest shift in light.

Eugenia Alcaide (b. 1983) is known for her pioneering techniques in layered thread work using stretched silk canvas and thread. She pursued art full-time in 2010, developing a technique that involves intertwining strands of thread along paths and patterns to produce the contours of a face. As a graduate of Painting from the University of the Philippines, she has mounted several solo and group shows at some of the country’s most prominent galleries while participating in major local art events.

Recognized for her watercolor works, Ev Yu (b. 1990) dives headfirst into a new medium in her solo exhibition “The Wiggle Room.” The series of works were made in a period when the artist was introduced to painting with oils. “I enjoyed having to experience a childlike ambition again,” she says. “The lack of familiarity with technique leaves room to play with ideas and limitations.” The solo exhibition tackles the lack of space that one allows themselves to have in moments of uncertainty, presenting works with plenty of fluid gestures using oil that looks like the visualization of the saying “getting your feet wet.”

‘Her works tell the story of being on the edge of explosion, of transformation, and of mutation.’

Through marrying offbeat color palette and off-center geometry, Ev Yu conjures chaotic yet hallucinatory visuals. In her works, shapes transfigure to another, colors transition into different hues, and often, too, these elements collapse into each other.

It may be challenging to make out a familiar figure in Yu’s watercolor paintings, yet there is a palpable sense of narrative in the way they are segmented into panels. Her works tell the story of being on the edge of explosion, of transformation, and of mutation.

“Layers” and “The Wiggle Room” are on view until Feb. 23 at Galerie Stephanie on the fourth floor of Shangri-la Plaza East Wing, Mandaluyong City.