Florence-based Filipino contemporary artist Stephanie Honrado is back in a one-woman exhibit at Salcedo Private View dubbed as “Ode to the Ordinary,” ongoing until July 22. Although she pays homage to the objects’ ordinariness, the techniques and points of view she resorts to are anything but ordinary.
If we look hard enough, even the most ordinary objects and people are teeming with beauty that’s both sublime and whimsical. In the hands of an adept artist, their very randomness and imperfections are what make each of these objects and individuals unique.
Following the sold-out success of her first solo exhibition “Come Stai? (How are you?),” and her participation in the Art Fair Philippines group show “Headspace,” Florence-based contemporary artist Stephanie Honrado returns this month to Salcedo Private View with “Ode to the Ordinary.”
The exhibition shows Honrado continuing in her creative journey to capture the innate beauty of ordinary things, and the environs of her adoptive hometown of Florence. “It moves me that such depth, clarity, and wisdom about the reality of life can come from something so accessible and always available,” says Honrado.
What’s interesting about these works is the manner in which the artist extends this notion of finding beauty in the ordinary through her variations on the same subject. It’s as if she seeks to further underscore her obsession for unraveling meaning through careful and consistent observation of a single object or scene.
Honrado, for example, renders a single scarf in vibrant red and blue knotted, curled and draped in her attempts to open viewers eyes to myriad interpretations. Also presented in this exhibition are several canvases painted in the academic tradition depicting white clouds set against the clear blue sky. Several of these works were painted en plein air or outdoors to encapsulate the “candid energy of on-site painting.”
There’s a certain rawness to Honrado’s images, which allows the artist through her compositions to open “portals to a deepened state of awareness about [her] daily life. She also praises the efficacy of working with oil as it emits “a sense of life and atmosphere, and feeling of reality” to her works. This latest collection underscores the artist’s enduring passion and commitment to refining her artistic technique in the classical style.
The sky series paintings, for example, depict cloud formations that the artist observed daily from her preferred spot in the Basilica di Santa Chiara in Assisi. “Cloud formations are visually entertaining. To enjoy them means looking up and away from my own busy-ness and [taking] a literal break from the humdrum of [everyday life],” says Honrado, who enjoys the “the fleeting and challenging yet comforting nature of clouds.”
The scarf series, on the other hand, continues what is arguably Hondrado’s most recognized subject–one that she started painting in 2017. Set against a weathered backdrop, the scarves were painted in varying primary colors to further emphasize their stationary positions. It is in this series that Honrado “found practical applications for lessons on hue, value and chroma, which I learned at the academy,” she shares. The ruffled scarves hanging against a door or wall are the artist’s deliberate renditions of “simple, functional objects to present a visual experience of pure form, color and texture.”
Other works on exhibit include a series of nude oils on canvas showing the artist’s progress in academic life painting.
“Ode to the Ordinary” by Stephanie Honrado can be viewed until July 22 at Salcedo Auctions, NEX Tower, 6786 Ayala Avenue, Makati City. For inquiries, email info@salcedoauctions.com or phone +632 8 8230956 | +63 9171075581. Follow @salcedoauctions on Instagram and Facebook for more updates.
