Bare Tactics by Isa Lorenzo and Rachel Rillo

Two firsts: a photography show by blanc and, Isa Lorenzo and Rachel Rillo sharing the two-person show opening this August 7, Saturday. Called Bare Tactics, artists Lorenzo and Rillo, coincidentally co-directors of the Silverlens Galleries, unearth and expose the core images that are the backbone of a memory or an aspiration.

Lorenzo’s starting point is the icon. Using the analog process of the photogram, she makes imprints of iconic seventies’ stars, musicals and photography stalwarts—from Jesus Christ Superstar to Vanessa Redgrave to the Bernd and Hilla Bechers. Her imagery are the “tacked photographs ‘up on a board’”, the mementos of aspiration.  By layering and overlapping the images with everyday objects, Lorenzo “meats the bones into bodies”.  With each of the pieces starting to become a whole, “a strategy emerges”.

Rillo takes her cue from her show in 20SQUARE called Under The Floorboards, which opens on August 4. In both shows, her work recalls the process of memory keeping with its use of stored photographs and images from travels, out takes and tear sheets – the things “she kept hidden under the floorboards”.  But its not simply a scrapbook of memories, idols and inspirations; the pieces are reworked and transferred onto paper and vinyl, and combined with surface materials stripped and cut to reveal their undersides. On vinyl wood, marble and cork, Rillo transforms the layers of imagery into minimal, bare forms. She deletes the details to keep the bones of the memory.

Stripped to the bare essentials, Rillo and Lorenzo’s works zero in on the photograph as keepers of re-purposed memories and aspirations.

Bare Tactics is a related event of Under The Floorboards by Rachel Rillo, which runs in 20SQUARE at SLab, Silverlens Gallery from August 4-28,2010.

Bare Tactics will open on Saturday, August 7 6PM atblancPeninsulaManila. Blanc PMN is located at The Peninsula Manila G/F Shops 9 and 10 Ayala Avenue corner Makati Avenue, Makati City.

The exhibition will run until August 28, 2010.

For more information please visit www.blanc.ph or call/sms +63920.9276436