Opening of Flora Exhibit in honor of Bro. Kamel 10 October 2006

The art exhibit Flora: Beauty, Desire and Death is scheduled to open on 10 October 2006 at the Ateneo Art Gallery. It joins Zero-In, a joint annual program of five museums/ galleries, namely, the Ateneo Art Gallery, the Ayala Museum, the Lopez Museum, the Museong Pambata, and the latest Bahay Tsinoy. This year Zero-In chose as a theme the convergence of Art and Science. Ayala's exhaibition entitled Black Bouquet, will be on the prints of Juvenal Sanso. Museong Pambata features the pressed flower works of Penny Velasco. Bahay Tsinoy will feature Chinese herbal medicine and the Lopez Museum's "Fuzzy Logic" will focus on the impact of new media on the visual arts.

A joint catalogue for Zero-in is being prepared. I wrote a 2000-word essay for Flora, which includes a short boxed article on George Josef Kamel. This week we went through the Ateneo Art Gallery's collection and chose some 30 works related to the theme of Flora. Painter and watercolorist Araceli Limcaoco-Dans invited me to her studio and negotiations to borrow some of her works have been firmed. Its a matter of deciding which of her works will be exhibited. Yasmine Almonte and Geraldine Javier are next in line.

We have discussed the look of the show, probably painting a whole wall of the gallery Hunter Green. I have chosen the identifying icon of the exhibit, which will be a colorized version of the Thea sinensis found in Kamel (See illustration on this blog).

Flora will run until 2007 to coincide with the Linneaus celebrations. Flora promises to be an exciting exhibition on a much neglected theme.