SAPOT: One-man Art Exhibition by Ritche Nicholas Yee Opens March 12

The Sining Makiling Art Gallery at the University of the Philippines Los Baños presents the first one - man art exhibition, SAPOT (web), of Ritche Yee. Ritche is a contemporary artist based in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines. He hailed from Agusan Del Norte and has earned a degree in Commerce from Fr. Saturnino Urios University in Butuan City. However, he realized soon after that he could only be at his best when he is occupied with the visual arts. 

Thus, he attended different art workshops to enhance his knowledge and further his skills.  He eventually began his apprenticeship to renowned visual artist Hermes Alegre from 2002 to 2003 and acclaimed international artist Luis “Junyee” Yee, Jr. from 2008 to 2012. He regularly competes in many prestigious national art competitions such as the GSIS Art Competition, the yearly art competition of the Arts Association of the Philippines, the Metrobank Art and Design for Excellence (MADE) Award, the Philippine Art Award, among others. Luckily, he consistently emerges as one of the winners of the said competitions, notably bagging the Grand Prize of the Non-representational Category of the GSIS Art Competition in 2011. He joined the Arts Association of the Philippines (AAP) and many artists collective, particularly the MakiSining: The Makiling Art Group, in order to acquaint himself with artists and to stipulate his artistic endeavors to the community at large. He is the current Public Relations Officer of the MakiSining.

Ritche frequently joins group exhibitions in Laguna and Metro Manila, and some of his works were exhibited in GSIS Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, AAP Kanlungan ng Sining, Sining Makiling Art Gallery, Kulay Diwa Gallery of Contemporary Arts, among others.

For SAPOT, Ritche will fill up the gallery with clear nylon wires, emulating the spider’s web of its intricacies and latency to expansiveness. It is to the artist’s marvel of the scale of a web’s length despite the modest size of its weaver, who as a child once reared fighting spiders for fun. The installation will also depict the natural habitat of common spiders through found woods, dried leaves where cocoons are usually spun, and stones. The blanket of nylon wires, as if depicting thick webs enshrouding trees by thousands of spiders, portrays the interesting structural ability of spider webs that, aside from its deceptive decoy motives, can only be achieved through laborious work—something that is prevalent to the artist’s technique in abstract art where he is known more of. The whole exhibition also pays homage to his uncle, Junyee, the pioneer of site-specific installation art in the country.

The exhibition will mark as his first foray to the practice of installation art aside from his current dwelling in the nonrepresentational art and sculpture.  To serve as the opening reception's guest-of-honor is Luis "Junyee" Yee, Jr., the UPLB Artist-in-Residence and the pioneer of site-specific installation art in the country. 

The exhibition will start this coming March 12 and ends on April 30, 2013 at  Sining Makiling Art Gallery Dioscoro L. Umali Hall, University of the Philippines Los Baños, College, Los Banos, Laguna. The gallery is open from Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.