SLab: A New Gallery & ArtLab for Contemporary Art

SLab (Silverlens Lab) is the new gallery, established in 2008 in Makati City, for contemporary art under the Silverlens Group. Silverlens Gallery will continue to show photography and new media while the adjacent SLab will be showing painting, drawing, and sculpture. The two spaces will be bridge-linked, the former being a piano warehouse and the latter being a former auditorium.

SLab will have two galleries, a 120 square meter main space for longer curated shows, and the 20 square meter smaller gallery for young artists, for projects the curators are working on, and for collectors and artists consignments. The backroom for both Silverlens and SLab will be actively showing work by all the represented artists. Their artists push the boundaries of their medium and are aggressive in their dialogue with a critical audience. Represented artists include Patricia Eustaquio, Lena Cobangbang, Mariano Ching, Christina Dy, Gary Ross Pastrana, Rachel Rillo, and Isa Lorenzo, among others. They are also actively represented by Silverlens internationally in art fairs and gallery collaborations for their exposure, recall, recognition, and collection.

The inaugural show of SLab is Patricia Eustaquio who will be showing painting and multi-material sculpture. A Magna Cum Laude Graduate of painting from the UP Diliman Fine Arts Program, Eustaquio returns to her core art after years of fashion design. Based on J.S. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, a body of musical work that uses all 24 keys of the piano, indiscriminate of majors and minors, she creates 12 pieces that are odes to the sublimity of music, but silent. We see shaped canvases filled with feathers and other stilled life, an exquisitely tooled miniature piano in leather, a ceramic violin with a frozen heart.  That the space was formerly a music auditorium is beyond coincidence.

Asked why she joined SLab, Eustaquio narrates, "I wanted to work within the context of a new space and the energy that comes from it.. Of course I also want my works to be part of a wider dialogue, and with the art fairs, SLab is participating in, I feel that I have more of an opportunity to grow while my works are scrutinized by a larger audience."

SLab opens at 2320 Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati City in October 2008. Silverlens Gallery will be showing Isa Lorenzo, 003 simultaneously. www.silverlensphoto.com

SLab exhibits

2008

Oct-Nov - Patricia Eustaquio

Nov-Dec - Bea Valdes

2009

Jan-Feb - Renato Orara

Mar-Apr - Christina Dy

May-Jun - Lena Cobangbang