passing figures

Passing Figures explores moments of pause and transition. Movement is felt, but direction has not yet been chosen. Drawing from the experience of people watching and standing at a figurative fork in the road, the exhibition considers presence as something implied rather than depicted. Rather than focusing on figures or narratives, the works approach passing as a condition: traces, shifts, interruptions, and moments of hesitation. The exhibition leans toward abstraction and restraint, inviting attention to what lingers before a decision is made.

Shared Conditions

To support flow and coherence across the exhibition, each artist pair is guided by a shared, open-ended condition.

These conditions act as points of alignment rather than instructions.

Flux (ND Harn, Valerie Chua)
A condition of continual change and instability.
Movement without arrival, forms or surfaces that refuse to settle.

Pause (Lyndon Maglalang, Rom Villaseran)
A condition of suspension and hesitation.
Holding, waiting, or the moment before action.

Flux

Flux is understood here as a condition of continual change and instability.

Movement without arrival, forms or systems that refuse to settle, and processes shaped by accumulation, interruption, or repetition.

This pairing brings together internal and durational forms of flux, where change is registered through fragmentation, layering, and time-based structure.

Pause

Pause is approached as a condition of suspension and hesitation. A moment of holding, containment, or restraint, where movement is felt but temporarily withheld.

This pairing explores pause as a form of tension rather than stillness, bringing together arrested motion and spatial structures that hold energy in place.

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ND Harn (b. 1996) is a visual artist based in Pasig City, Philippines. Her works focus on memories and personal experiences through layering, overlapping, and scribbling. ND works with oil pastels, graphite, ballpoint pen, and collage, as well as the many techniques and processes of printmaking. She occasionally creates installation works with yarn and textiles.

Artist statement: my practice investigates the nature of memory, grief, and the difficult process of letting go. In response to the concept of flux, these works treat change not just as a subject matter but as an active physical process of loss and erasure.
By using the reduction process in relief printmaking, where I gradually carve away more of a single wood matrix after each print, the act of creation becomes tied to an act of destruction.

There is an inherent irony to this process: The more images I want to add to the composition, the more of the wood matrix I have to carve away. This contradiction serves as a metaphor for the impermanence of life. The more we experience life, the closer we get to the end of our life.

One of ones functions as an exercise in letting go. Each image added to the print represents a place I can no longer return to, objects no longer in my possession, and loved ones no longer in my life. The inclusion of the destroyed wood matrix and the recorded process layers the past and the present, presenting the evidence of what has been subtracted over time.

Recalling Forward applies this metaphor to a repeating loop of a singular experience. The title refers to the psychological friction of memory: I am actively recalling a past moment while carving it, but doing so from my present point of view. Based on a video I took while riding a boat through the Pasig River, this series breaks a single memory into separate moments. The work exists in a state of paradox, moving forward and disappearing at the same time, capturing how our relationship to the past is constantly rewritten by the passage of time.

Valerie Chua (b. 1987) is an artist from Manila, Philippines. Her artistic practice revolves around the appropriation of image stock and both personal and public film images as her primary subject matter. Her works capture the multifaceted nature of identity construction, often played out in our era of social media and visual culture. Chua’s paintings explore the human impulse to curate, hoard, and mimic, which shapes the creation of a public persona that aligns with an inner sense of self. Through her use of familiar and ubiquitous images, Chua presents an incisive commentary on contemporary culture, underscoring the power and malleability of visual representation in shaping our perception of ourselves.

Artist statement: for this show, I returned to using sculptures as the basis for my paintings, which is a nod to my practice before 2020, when sculptures were my primary subjects. This time, however, I approached them with a brighter, more contemporary palette (ie. the palette that I currently use), using light and color to shift them away from the serious, gothic atmosphere they are often associated with.

Passing Figures is not only about people who move through time and space. It is also about objects that carry history. By repositioning sculptures and relics in a different color field, I explore how meaning changes when they are removed from their familiar ambiance.

I spliced the subjects (sculptures) and used fields of color to interrupt and overlap them, making it slightly out of place. Rather than presenting a fixed scene, I want these interruptions to give the feeling of the objects being reassembled.

Lyndon Maglalang's (b.1993) artistic practice engages in deliberate and careful representation of narratives through succinct depictions of landscapes, melancholic scenes, and figures that hint at human life.
Maglalang's poetic illustration of scenarios that rest neither in the past, present, nor future produces inward observations of reality. Often, his works are influenced by stories and parables, which allow Maglalang to portray contemplative images that complete the mise-en-scene. Maglalang graduated from University of Rizal System - Angono Campus as an Advertising major and was featured in exhibitions at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and recently at Art Busan in Korea.

Artist statement: passing Figures began as an inquiry into what it means to move through life with awareness not only to pause in the present, but to consider what lingers when a moment is gone. I often return to the phrase, "This too shall pass." It is a reminder that everything we experience, whether joyful or painful, is fleeting. Yet, nothing departs without leaving a trace.

In my practice, I find myself asking: What do these experiences leave within us? What do they teach us?

The works in this exhibition revolve around three central motifs: the body, the vessel, and the house. This exploration is anchored by the imagery of 2 Timothy 2:20, which speaks of a great house containing vessels not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and earth. This text serves as a reminder that every vessel has an inherent purpose, independent of its material, form, or outward appearance.

Through these pieces, I explore the body as a vessel that carries memory, experience, and transformation. Each artwork captures the quiet residue of what has passed, suggesting that our value is not defined by our exterior, but by the purpose we are called to fulfill. By recognizing what remains after each passing season, Passing Figures invites us to live with greater intention, embracing both the inevitability of change and the quiet, continuous shaping of the self.

Rom Villaseran (b. 1975) is an artist from Manila with a diverse oeuvre that ranges from book publications to fine art and design. Extracting from a range of influences, from science to graphic design and Manila's underground music scene, his works are intrinsically complex. His paintings are typically known for their great detail and skill, however, his works retain a spontaneous quality that evidences the artist's affinity for chance. Traditional yet undeniably novel, his works bring imagination into the empirical world, and interfusing organic forms with metaphysical visuals.

Artist statement: the objective in a lot of my work is not to get all of the details in there. It’s quite the opposite. I focus on what I can leave out. For me, that is what pause is. This accomplishes two things. One is to engage the viewer by making their minds fill in what I left out. Second, aside from making the piece more interesting, it helps guide where the viewer’s eyes should travel and focus on.

At first glance, Kunehong Bukid seems to be a piece filled with foliage. A closer inspection will reveal that very little of it was actually rendered into the piece. Other than a few mushrooms and flowers here and there, not much has been detailed. That is because I trust that the viewers mind will complete it for me. Two of the three characters are barely rendered because I wanted the viewer to first discover the farmer at the center before the rabbit and the cat finally reveal themselves. That is the ability of “pause”

When I was producing Pugad, I started by painting two birds in a nest. As the painting went on, it decided that it wanted to turn the nest into their bodies. So by “pausing” or placing just a few details for their legs and bodies, the birds now look like they are both resting in their nests, as well as standing by the outer walls of the city.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Chloe Magpayo is a curator and creative professional with a background in fashion and fragrance marketing. She graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a major in Fashion Marketing and Management and a minor in Fragrance Marketing and Management. Since 2022, she has been co-curating exhibitions with The Empty Scholar, an independent curatorial platform focused on thoughtful, cross-disciplinary conversations. In July 2025, she curated her first solo exhibition, Dear Future Me, at Modeka Art, exploring themes of reflection and becoming. In October 2025, she solo-curated Audacity, her largest exhibition to date, held at RCBC Plaza, featuring over 20 participating artists and examining boldness, risk, and self-determination in contemporary practice. Outside of her curatorial work, she is the Global Assistant E-Commerce Manager at Love, Bonito.