Silverlens New York is pleased to present a much-anticipated, dual-artist exhibition showcasing works by Carlos Villa and Leo Valledor, both widely recognized among the most influential Filipino-American artists in US history. Coinciding with the ten year anniversary of Villa’s death, Remains of Surface is a hallmark exhibition marking the first major presentation of the artists’ work together. Remains of Surface opens September 7, 2023.

The exhibition poignantly highlights the artists’ life work and shared history as Filipino Americans. Bringing attention to a largely uncharted facet of their oeuvre, the show ultimately narrates the story of two artists of the diaspora. Both Villa and Valledor were experienced educators who taught at their alma mater, the San Francisco Art Institute, where they were colleagues. Their friendship began in childhood: they grew up in the same close knit San Francisco community of Filipino immigrants. Both of their mothers were from Lapog (currently San Juan), in the Ilocos province of the Philippines; because of this, Leo and Carlos informally referred to each other as ‘cousins’. Villa and Valledor played pioneering roles in the development of the young Filipino-American art scene in the 1960s and established life-long artistic practices later recognized to have expanded the lexicon of American Modernism.

Despite their parallel life trajectories, Villa and Valledor’s approach to art-making have striking contrasts. Where Valledor explored color-fields, minimalism, and skillfully shaped canvases with meticulous precision in a distinct, abstract style, Villa’s unconventional approach defied categorization, often incorporating his own physical body prints and materials such as bone, feathers, and blood. In placing the two artists’ work together—through nearly fifty-year-old pieces that reference topical issues of today such as immigration, identity, and racism—viewers can discern the purposefulness of each artist’s creations and how their works mutually influenced one another.

Carlos Villa (b. 1936 – d. 2013) was a San Francisco-born, multifaceted artist, activist, curator, author, and educator for over four decades at the San Francisco Art Institute. His life’s work was shaped by a pivotal moment during his early education when a professor dismissed the existence of Filipino art history; an encounter that led Villa to embark on a groundbreaking practice of sourcing materials from Indigenous cultures across the globe. Villa created works that defied colonial perspectives, boldly claimed a cross-cultural diasporic identity, and ultimately served as a powerful foundation for the next generation of artists.

Leo Valledor (b. 1936 – d. 1989) was a San Francisco-born abstractionist who made a significant impact as a founding member of New York’s renowned Park Place Group, a collective founded by ten artists that became a hub of innovation and collaboration. Through their avant-garde experimentation, the collective pioneered geometric abstraction and redefined concepts of spatial representation, providing a platform for influential artists of the time such as Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse, and Donald Judd (who said Valledor was one of the best artists of that time). Valledor’s work, in conversation with artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella, embraced the principles of color-field minimalism but stood out with its distinct use of space, shape, and color. Inspired by jazz music, Valledor infused his artwork with rich cultural and personal references, evident in his titles.

For Remains of Surface, Silverlens will showcase a number of works created by Villa and Valledor throughout their careers, dating as early as 1955. The works speak to their shared lived experiences and subjectivities as American individuals of Filipino descent, as well as the challenges they faced throughout their lives. Through a sincere exploration of color, size, and shape, Villa and Valledor distinctly address these conflicts in their work.

Beginning in the 1980s, Carlos Villa shifted the iconography of his exploration and foregrounded the Filipino body through the making of indexical body prints. For example, Untitled (Face Prints with Wig and Photograph) features over 70 physical imprints of his own face arranged into rows; a wig hangs on the top left corner and a photo of the artist’s mother sits on the bottom right corner. Meanwhile, Leo Valledor’s works on view in Remains of Surface propose a lesser-known softness to his practice. Known for his Minimalist paintings and hard-edged abstract forms, Valledor tells a story of community and connection. In The Other Shore, a dreamy golden aura is centered on an orange geometric shape, contrasted by flat black and white lines slicing through.

Remains of Surface will be on view at Silverlens New York from September 7 to November 4, 2023.

EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING
Patrick Flores in Conversation with the Estates of Carlos Villa and Leo Valledor
Wednesday, September 13 | 6:30PM

In celebration of the exhibition, Silverlens New York will host Patrick Flores, Mary Valledor, and Rio Valledor for an intimate conversation surrounding the two artists and their discursive framing within art history.

Dr. Flores is a curator, critic, author, and professor. He was recently appointed Deputy Director for Curatorial and Research at the National Gallery Singapore. Among many other accolades, he has been the Artistic Director of the Singapore Biennale (2019) and the curator of the Taiwan Pavilion (2022) and Philippine Pavilion (2015) at the Venice Biennale.

ABOUT CARLOS VILLA
Carlos Villa (1936 – 2013) was a San Francisco-born visual artist, grass-roots activist, curator, author, and 40+ year educator at the San Francisco Art Institute, among other Bay Area institutions. His artistic origin story is often attributed to a pivotal moment in his early education, when a professor told Villa, “Filipino art history does not exist.” A decade later, he abandoned a career in minimalism to begin his ground-breaking practice of culling materials from indigenous cultures across the globe. He collided feathers, bone, and physical body prints to create strangely-human works that challenged colonial perspectives and laid radical claim to a cross-cultural, diasporic identity that ultimately served as a powerful foundation for the next generation of artists. In 2022, Villa received the first-ever major museum retrospective dedicated to the work of a Filipino American artist, which toured bi-coastal from the Newark Museum of Art to the San Francisco Art Institute and Asian Art Museum. As an educator, he developed a renowned curriculum that merged critical race theory and active volunteerism. He mentored notable students such as Kehinde Wiley, Iona Rozeal Brown, and Paul Pfeiffer, among many others. Villa additionally founded the highly influential symposia series “Sources of a Distinct Majority,” which brought together community and cultural leaders. Esteemed speakers and collaborators included Angela Davis, bell hooks, Ruth Asawa, Martin Puryear, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Through his multifaceted work, Villa challenged the established canon, aiming to rewrite history to faithfully reflect and acknowledge the marginalized. A solo presentation of Villa’s work will be on view at Silverlens’s booth at Frieze London 2023.

ABOUT LEO VALLEDOR
Leo Valledor (1936 – 1989) was a San Francisco-born, New York-based abstractionist and founding member of downtown Manhattan’s trailblazing Park Place Gallery. The space was an iconoclastic artist collective and exhibition venue founded by ten emerging artists, including Valledor, many of whom are now recognized as among the most influential Modernists in American history, including Dean Fleming, Mark di Suvero, and Robert Grosvenor, among others. It was a space for collaborative experimentation where the cohort advanced what became genre-defining techniques of geometric abstraction and new concepts of space. It provided a venue to show their friends, also then-emerging, now-iconic artists, such as Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse, and Donald Judd, and more. Playing with dimensionality and flatness, Valledor used geometry to shape the canvas, employing optical illusions or unusually shaped canvases to engage the wall space. Contextualized through the work of Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, Leon Polk Smith, and Frank Stella, Valledor’s work was in the vanguard of the color-field and minimalist aesthetics, but is characterized by a unique use of space, shape, and color. Inspired by jazz music, Valledor often connected his work to a myriad of broader cultural and personal references through the titles of his pieces. At the age of nineteen, Valledor had his first solo show, Compositions, featuring his expressionist “Black and Blue Series” at the historic Six Gallery in San Francisco. The artist has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Valledor’s works are in collections across the country from The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.