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| Silverlens Galleries | |
|---|---|
| Name | Silverlens Galleries |
| Established | 2005 |
| Location | Manila; New York |
| Type | Contemporary art gallery |
| Director | [unspecified] |
| Website | [official website] |
Silverlens Galleries is a contemporary art gallery founded in the early 21st century with offices in Manila and New York. The gallery represents and promotes contemporary artists from the Philippines and Southeast Asia while engaging with international art networks, fairs, and institutions. It has contributed to exhibitions, collections, and cultural exchanges involving museums, biennials, and private foundations.
Silverlens emerged amid shifts in the Asian and global art circuits that included interactions with institutions such as the National Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Guggenheim Museum, and Smithsonian Institution. Its development paralleled regional platforms like the Singapore Biennale, Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennial, Biennale of Sydney, and Shanghai Biennale. The gallery’s trajectory intersected with private collectors and foundations including the Saatchi Gallery, Lisson Gallery, White Cube, Pace Gallery, and David Zwirner insofar as market visibility and exhibition exchanges.
The gallery was established in Manila before expanding activities to international art centers, coordinating participation at fairs such as Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, Fiac, Art Stage Singapore, and Art Central Hong Kong. Partnerships and collaborations were formed with institutions and commercial galleries like Yuz Museum, M+, Ota Fine Arts, Pares Balta, and Gagosian Gallery through loans, artist projects, and curatorial exchanges. Its expansion strategy engaged collectors and museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum, Kunsthalle Zürich, and Fondation Louis Vuitton.
Silverlens has exhibited and represented artists whose careers intersect with figures and movements associated with names such as Josef Albers, Frida Kahlo, Fernando Amorsolo, Juan Luna, Fernando Zóbel, BenCab, Cesar Legaspi, Ang Kiukok, Antony Gormley, Ai Weiwei, Yayoi Kusama, Anish Kapoor, Tracey Emin, and Marina Abramović by way of thematic dialogues, group shows, and comparative exhibitions. Exhibitions often referenced historic and contemporary trajectories including works connected to Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Takashi Murakami, David Hockney, and Kehinde Wiley. The gallery mounted solo exhibitions and thematic group shows that engaged curators and critics from institutions such as Modern Art Oxford, ICA London, Hammer Museum, Whitney Museum, and Serpentine Galleries.
Works shown or brokered by the gallery have entered private and public collections including the holdings of the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Princeton University Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Harvard Art Museums, Columbia University, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and corporate collections like Microsoft Collection and JP Morgan Chase Collection. Notable works exhibited in the gallery’s program have been discussed in relation to productions by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Olafur Eliasson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Cao Fei, Shahzia Sikander, Julie Mehretu, and Yoko Ono. Auction interest linked to names such as Sotheby's and Christie's has intersected with the gallery’s market activities.
Curatorial strategies emphasized cross-cultural dialogues, commissioning new works, and fostering critical discourse via talks and publications with cultural partners including Asia Society, British Council, Goethe-Institut, Japan Foundation, and Alliance Française. Programming drew on scholarly collaborations with university departments and museums such as University of the Philippines, Yale School of Art, Columbia University School of the Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London, and Courtauld Institute of Art. The gallery organized symposiums and panels featuring speakers associated with institutions like Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, CCA Wattis, and ZKM.
Gallery spaces were sited in Manila neighborhoods interacting with urban cultural clusters and in New York neighborhoods proximate to gallery districts, reflecting dialogues with architectural practices and landmarks such as I. M. Pei, Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, OMA, and Frank Gehry through space design and temporary interventions. Exhibitions configured lighting and spatial design practices influenced by curatorial models at LACMA, SFMOMA, Centre Pompidou, Kunsthaus Zurich, and Rijksmuseum.
Silverlens’s activities attracted coverage and critique in art media and journals alongside outlets and institutions such as Artforum, ArtReview, Frieze, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, Artnet, ArtAsiaPacific, Time Out, and The New York Times. Its role in promoting contemporary Philippine and Southeast Asian artists intersected with national cultural institutions like the National Museum of the Philippines and contemporary platforms including Green Papaya Art Projects and The Drawing Room. The gallery’s influence extended to market, curatorial, and institutional networks, affecting collector practices tied to entities like Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company collectible programs, regional biennials, and university collections.
Category:Contemporary art galleries