Arianna Mercado
curator, writer






Ray Albano: Aleator
curated by Judy Freya Sibayan
February 21 - 24, 2019
Art Fair Philippines, The Link, Makati (Special Exhibition)

Ray Albano: Aleator was a part of the 2019 Art Fair Philippines/Projects section. Curated by Judy Freya Sibayan, this exhibition aimed to expose wider audiences to the works of Ray Albano, a prolific Filipino conceptual artist, curator, and writer who was active in the arts beginning the 70s until his death in 1985.

This exhibition brought together Albano’s graphic design work during his time as the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ museum director and a recreation of his immersive and instructive work, Step on the Sand and Make Footprints.



While keenly attentive to method, Ray Albano (1947-1985) left parts of his deeds up to chance. His posters, only a fraction of his oeuvre, are a testament to this process. Poster work found a place in Albano’s curatorial work at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Hoping to engage a wider audience, Albano took risks with his design, experimenting with exciting graphic options.

Albano’s interactive installation, Step on the Sand and Make Footprints, complicates the nature of the graphic aesthetic, even as it returns to its fundamental gesture of marking an index: the pressure of the human body transferred onto a surface. First submitted and awarded at the Tokyo International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in 1974, the piece encouraged chance and play. It was all at once, graphic, installative, and performative, inviting the audience to make a step and leave a trace in the very act of nearly uneventful walking. —Patrick D. Flores