Roy Veneracion

2016 FINDING WITHOUT SEEKING, Altromondo Arte Contemporaneo, Greenbelt 5, Makati

2016 ABSTRACT ART, FINALE ART FILE, Pasong Tamo, Makati

5. UNEXPLORED TERRAIN, Hannah Jo Uy and Pinggot Zulueta, MANILA BULLETIN, May 2, 2016.

6. FINDING WITHOUT SEEKING, Reuben Ramas Canete Phd, THE PHILIPPINE STAR, May 2, 2016.

7. ROY VENERACION OPENS UP TO THE WORLD, Cid Reyes, PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER, May 23, 2016

2013 ROY VENERACION - SYNCRE ART. NCCA GALLERY, NCCA Bldg., General Luna Street, Intramuros, Manila.

4. National Commission for Culture and Arts Gallery presents: Roy Veneracion-SYNCRE ART 2013, www.ncca.gov.ph

1. ART AND ITS CONTEXT, essays, reviews, and interviews on Philippine Art-Reuben Ramas Canete, University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, c. 2012.

2011 THE ESSENTIALITY OF POLYSTYLE SYNCRETISM TO A MULTIPLE PERSONALITY ARTIST IN THE 21ST CENTURY - NOVA GALLERY warehouse 12A La Fuerza Compound, Don Chino Roces Ave. Makati

This combination of the catholicity of taste as well as a pan-inclusivity of viewpoints and perspectives - except those which reject outright the Syncretist values of intellectual openness and freedom, as well as the very explicit prohibition against artistic falsehood and the surrender to the commodity market, originates from very distinct historical roots: the liberal atmosphere of the late Sixties era U.P. Diliman, with its contradictions of bureaucratic orthodoxy intermingled with faculty and student radicalism and the cornucopia of disparate aesthetic thoughts percolating within the Fine Arts studios. This included Bobby Chabet's anti-commercialist Conceptualism; Jose Joya's embrace of both Abstract painting and Figurative Drawing; Virginia Flor-Agbayani's romantic Modernism; Rod Paras-Perez's formalism and the great western tradition; and Billy Abueva's native figuration circumscribed either in modernist brutalism or a curvaceous sensuality. Of these mentors, Joya was the closest to Roy's felt advocacies and crystallized for him the fluid possibilities of fusing and rejoining what the western mind has sundered apart in the name of hegemonic imperialism and homogenous modernity. This was expanded by Roy's journeys in Japan, Europe, and the U.S. to witness the works firsthand of the major innovators of the period from the Seventies to the Eighties: Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Sigmar Polke, Eric Fischl, and David Salle. This outward journey also expanded his horizons by not simply limiting the visual experience to the great museums (the Louvre, the Tate, MoMA, the Met, the Guggenheim, Fukuoka) but also to the peripherialized areas of modern (read ethnic) artistic production, such as studios of American-Indians, Asian-Americans, Canadians and graffiti artists in Los Angeles and New York. Reflecting on his work, and applying it to his own historical and cultural context in the Philippines since the mid-Eighties, Roy laid the foundations of his Syncretism principle through this globalized synthesis and cobbling together of various artistic principles, introducing as his own suturing strategy the local context of lived experience, historical trauma, and contemporary portents of future catastrophe. Flash forward to 2010. With the success of his 2008 Syncretism exhibition at LA Art Core in Los Angeles behind him, Roy once more revisits the territory of opposing ideas that have led him down a twenty-year path of differential art making, this time into twin forms of multi-paneled paintings which he calls "Cluster paintings"; and scroll-type "tapestry paintings", both of which subvert the traditional dichotomies of western and eastern painting approaches in distinct ways. The cluster paintings expand the visual scope beyond the strict boundaries of a single frame, allowing multiple paintings to cohere visually by "accretion", or the assemblage of differently-sized quadrilateral canvases beyond a central core, exploding the monolithic nature of "square framing". The tapestry paintings do away with the restrictive box frame itself, floating over the wall with its Asian-style scroll hanger, becoming one with the elements of wind and earth. Thus, both formats transgress accepted boundaries or restrictions to art: the first being rooted in the tradition of singular masterpieces; the second as a silent commentary on the domination of one culture over another.

2009 SYNCRETISM - ROY VENERACION; Jack Miller & Associates Gallery, La Cienega Blvd., L.A. Ca., USA

2009 KWATRO KANTOS, Sining Kamalig, Gateway, Cubao, Quezon City

The last motif, which Roy also focused on in his 2008 "Syncretism" series, is also joined by "abstract works" (abstract in the sense that they utilize Non-Objectivist visualities in painting) that combine both fluid color-washes (of the style associated with Louis Morris) with thick, nervously-drawn gestural strokes with thick textures (like Sam Frances as loosened up by graffiti art) but combined in a visual montage of bright colors and sensual forms verging on an erotic descriptive intermingled with the materiality of daily life. This is then re-read into the artist's vision of nature and human experience, becoming palimpsests wherein we (as him) occupy surrealist-like dreams of wonder and regret ("Catching Clouds in Polychrome", "Seen and Unseen", and "Dawn Dispersed the Night"), narrate ironic metacommentaries of elitist consumerism ("Corporate Chic" or "Subliminal Abstract"), or a poetic return from civilizational (because patriarchal) hypocrisy towards a non-judgmental Nature that is motherly and nurturing ("Fragile Blue Sky"). The key to understanding these double-coded works is Roy's invocation of "pareidolia", or the human psyche's ability to recognize patterns from otherwise random forms. Also, the Latin 'alucinari' is flagged, as in the hallucinatory effect of dreams, mirages, and coded symbols that may mean nothing and everything at the same time.

2008 SYNCRETISM - ROY VENERACION; Union Center for the Arts., L. A. Artcore, Judge John Aiso Blvd., L.A. Ca., USA

2008 JACK MILLER & ASSOCIATES GALLERY La Cienega Blvd, L.A. Ca. USA

2006–2016 - Roy continues to explore new possibilities and techniques in painting and remains active in exhibitions in Manila and abroad.

2006 3 MAN-SHOW - Roy, Ian & Mikhail, Mag:net+Gallery, The Loop, ELJ Center, ABS-CBN, Quezon City

2005- Veneracion launched his Syncretism Aesthetics with a show titled: SYNCRETISM & BEYOND at the Mag:net+ Gallery, in Makati—a gallery specializing in Avant-Garde Art operated by his artist friend Rock Drilon. With some friends arguing that syncretism cannot be done, Roy persevered with his idea and won the support of critics in the Academe such as Dr. Reuben Ramas Cañete of U.P. and re-enforced by the acquisition by the Philippine National Museum, for its permanent collection, of one of Roy's Syncretistic Anti-Dictatorship works titled: IKA-13 PANGITAIN NI JUAN.

2005 SYNCRETISM & BEYOND; Mag:net+Gallery, Paseo de Roxas, Makati

2004 CHAKRAS - The Region of Power; West Gallery, Glorietta, Makati

2004 FORUM FOR FOUR, Art Forum, Caimhill Road., Singapore City

2002 Galleria Duemila, Artwalk, S.M. Megamall, Mandaluyong

2002 Mag:net+The Loop, ELJ Center Bldg., ABS-CBN Compound, Quezon City

2002 17th ASIAN INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, Daejeon Municipal Museum, Daejeon, Korea

2001 HECK FINAL, City Gallery, Los Feliz Blvd. Ca. USA

2000 TRANSMODERN TRANSGRESSIONS 3 Artists Show - Roy, Ian, and Chati, Bulwagang Fernando Amorsolo, CCP, Manila

1999 THE 14th ASIAN INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan

1998 EROS, Crucible Gallery, Artwalk, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong

1994 TO YOUR UNCONSCIOUS; Galleria Duemila, Artwalk, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong

3. ART PHILIPPINES, The Crucible Workshop, c. 1992.>

1991 DANGEROUS BUT ORDAINED, University of the Philippine, Quezon City

2. THE NATIONAL MUSEUM VISUAL ARTS COLLECTION published by National Museum of the Philippines Executive House, Padre, Manila, c. 1991.

1990- Roy Veneracion received the Cultural Center of the Philippines' 13 Artists Award. He also formed the artists’ group that called itself "The Remedios Circle" a pun name suggested by Rock Drilon, because they met invariably at the Penguin Cafe and Gallery at the Remedios Circle in Malate, discussing Art and planning exhibitions. The group's exhibiting members included: Mars Galang, Lao Lianben, Gus Albor, Cesare & Jean Marie Syjuco, Lito Carating, Rock Drilon, Hermisanto, Jojo Legaspi, Antonio Ramboyong, Pablo Orendain, Ian Veneracion, among others, who more-or-less regularly hung out with the group. The Penguin Cafe & Gallery became the "In" place as an artists’ hang-out during that time.

1990 CCP GAWAD PARA SA SINING BISWAL, 13 ARTISTS AWARDS, CCP Main Gallery, CCP, Manila

1990 Cultural Center of the Philippines Gawad CCP Para sa Sining Biswal or 13 Artists Awards

1989 MURAL PROJECT; "Ito na nga ang Paraiso ni Juan Tranquilino" Bulwagang Carlos V. Francisco, CCP, Manila

1989 SEGUNDA BIENAL DELA HAVANA, Wifredo Lam Center, Havana, Cuba

1989 CCP Mural Project 6, Bulwagang Carlos V. Francisco

1988 2nd ASIA-PACIFIC ARTS FESTIVAL, Club Med, Cherating, Malaysia

1986- The Marcos Dictatorship was dismantled by a popular uprising known to the World as the peaceful People Power Revolution. Roy Veneracion made a momentous painting chronicling the events on canvas with symbolical imagery, as he ran to-and-from his studio home and took part in the EDSA Revolution with his wife, Susan, their children: Rachel, and Ian (the child TV star), and artist friend Lito Carating.

1986 SKITZO; Penguin Cafe and Gallery, Malate, Manila

1986 BAGKUS-BUGKUS (BECAUSE WE'RE TOGETHER), Metropolitan Museum of Manila

1986 PIGLAS (BREAK FREE), CCP Main Gallery, CCP, Manila

1985 2nd ASIAN ART FESTIVAL, Fukuoka Museum, Fukuoka, Japan

1984 A ROADSHOW EXHIBITION, People's Republic of China

1983-1984 Cultural center of the Philippines Artist in Residence - Conducted Creative Workshops for the Arts

1982 FIFTH ONE-MAN-SHOW, Gallerie Bleue, Rustan's, Makti, MM

1982 Art Association of the Philippines Recognition of Excellence in the Arts Award

1980–1985 - Martial Law lingered on and Art was a struggle for everyone. Roy was made Artist-In-Residence of the Cultural Center of the Philippines for two consecutive years and regularly joined the CCP Annual Exhibitions organized by Museum Director Raymundo Albano. He became friends with Jose Joya, a former mentor and foremost Abstract Expressionist in the country, exhibiting with him along with a group of young abstractionists in Manila and San Francisco, USA. While showing his experimental abstracts with the group, Roy was also in the midst of developing his own style of merging differentiated art principles with his abstraction, allowing him to do works that protested the festering dictatorial regime and commented on the escalating arms race between the USSR and the NATO Allies.

1980-1988 CCP ANNUAL EXHIBITIONS FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, CCP, Manila

1980 SEVEN FILIPINO ARTISTS, Philippine House, San Francisco, USA

1978 INSIGHTS INTO PHILIPPINE CONTEMPORARY ART, IMF Building, Washington D.C., USA

1977 CANADIAN NATIONAL EXPOSITION, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

1976-1979 -Foreign travel was banned, but with an exhibition at the Philippine House in Mainz, Germany as a pretext, Roy Veneracion, N. Carating, and Eva Florentino were able to secure travel permits to Europe, Canada, and the USA. In London and Paris, exposure to the great art collections of the Tate and the Louvre, Montmartre, and Pegal districts broadened his artistic insight and gave him a sense of oneness with all the artists that had gone before, Roy and his friends also visited with ex-pat Filipino artists living and working in Paris, such as Ofie Gelvezon Tequi and Nena Saguil and talked about Parisian artistic life. Eva brought home a work by Nena Saguil, and the two artists exchanged works with Ofie Tequi. Tony Daroy, the painter who did ethnic-primitive flat patterned paintings, joined their group in Paris and together they took the Euro-Rail to Mainz, Germany.

1976 Mullen Hall, Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. USA

1976 FOUR FILIPINO ARTISTS, Oxon County Library, Alexandria, Virginia, USA

1976 FIVE FILIPINO ARTISTS, Philippine House Mainz, Germany

1974-1975- Spurred by a former U.P. classmate, N. Carating, Roy Veneracion joined an art contest sponsored by the newly founded Miladay Art Gallery in Makati. He did not win the contest, but his entry so impressed some art enthusiasts and art professionals that he was offered a One-Man-Show in the Gallery that same year. The show was followed by other shows in rapid successions wherein Roy became known as an enfant terrible Abstract Expressionist. His painting style consisted of pouring liquified oil paint onto puddles of water on prepared board panels laid flat on the floor which he tilted to make the mixture flow in various directions creating rainbows of colors that coalesce into unpredictable Surreal configurations. The medium and the technique suggested the direction to take with subsequent improvisational gestures that sometimes included: soil, pebbles, nails, twigs, and print markings of the artist's body. Roy Veneracion's art activities attracted the attention of like-minded artists, art dealers, and connoisseurs.

1974 1st ONE-MAN-SHOW; Miladay Art Center, Quad, Makati

1973 MINI-MAXI EXHIBITION, Gallerie Bleue, Rustan's, Makati

1970- Roy married Susan Lopez, a fashion model and Beauty Contest (Binibining Filipinas) finalist, and they soon had their first child, Rachel. He found jobs in Advertising Agencies and worked in the Creative Department of PhilProm, when in 1972, Martial Law was declared by President Ferdinand Marcos. All news media outlets were closed, and although Roy was retained in the skeleton force of the ad agency while waiting for things to normalize, the future seemed bleak causing him to resign his post to seek an opportunity to launch his true calling as a serious artist. Roy introduced himself to the art world and soon got invited to join group exhibitions in a leading gallery: Galerie Bleue in Makati.

1968 1st Prize Award- College Thesis, Editorial Design, U.P. College of Fine Arts

1960 1st Prize- Student's Art Contest, San Juan de Letran College, Intramuros, Manila

Roy Santos Veneracion (born on July 31, 1947 in Manila, Philippines) is a painter whose work explores a wide range of styles, techniques, materials, and subject matter. He is considered one of the leading abstract artists in his country and the precursor of contemporary Aesthetic Syncretism. His work is associated with the Syncretism Art Movement in the Philippines and abroad.

The Philippines was granted full independence by the United States on July 4, 1946, and in the neo-liberated atmosphere of Manila, Roy Veneracion became aware of his growing passion for Art. He attended elementary school at the Espiritu Santo Parochial School in Sta. Cruz Manila, a Catholic school run by Belgian nuns, where Roy earned early recognition for his artistic skills. Roy has no memory of drawing in the manner of children of his age. He was readily recognized as an art prodigy and became a sort of Artist-in-Residence in his grade school years, tasked to decorate the blackboard on special occasions and create the biological and anatomical illustrations for his Science Classes and draw the maps for the Geography Subjects. But for Roy, this early recognition of his drawing skills was no "big deal" –for he dreamt of higher artistic accomplishments later on.