Material Instincts is an exhibit that presents a compelling exploration of post-painterly abstraction through tactile and process-driven practices.
Curated by Bambina Olivares, the exhibition brings together four Filipina artists — Olivia d’Aboville, Marionne Contreras, Monica Delgado, and Michelle Pérez — in dialogue with Peter Zimmermann’s exhibit featuring newly developed sticker-based installation work, Painting Rules.
The juxtaposition of these practices highlights the diverse ways artists interrogate surface, volume, and material presence, creating a dynamic conversation between tactility, process, and abstraction.
At the heart of Material Instincts is an emphasis on materiality and process. Across the exhibition, textiles and paint are sliced, shaped, stretched, layered, tufted, pleated, and folded, allowing the physical properties of each medium to determine the form and visual language of the work. Rather than treating materials as mere vehicles for imagery, the artists foreground their inherent plasticity and three-dimensional presence.
Textile becomes a site of experimentation in d’Aboville’s practice, where she navigates the relationship between the organic and the synthetic through what she calls “textile paintings.”
Her works are simultaneously delicate and bold, reflecting a nuanced understanding of the material’s potential to convey both texture and conceptual depth.
Contreras, on the other hand, explores the tactile and emotional potential of yarn and felt, creating works that reflect on memory, its fragility, and the enduring narratives of womanhood and girlhood — often using eco-printing and botanical contact processes to produce her own textiles.
By employing eco-printing and botanical contact processes to produce her own textiles, Contreras embeds layers of meaning that are both personal and universal. The resulting pieces evoke a sense of intimacy, inviting viewers to engage with their softness, tension, and intricacy.
Working primarily with paint, Delgado and Pérez push the medium beyond the pictorial plane. Delgado approaches acrylic with a sculptural sensibility, treating paint as a substance to be built, layered, and physically shaped. Pérez’s work similarly embraces a “materialist” approach to painting, emphasizing the physical presence of paint as an object rather than an image.
Together, the artists offer a fresh perspective on post-painterly abstraction — one where the medium itself dictates form, structure, and meaning, and where process becomes as visible as the final work.
Material Instincts celebrates the intuitive, hands-on engagement of artists with their materials, underscoring the poetic possibilities inherent in tactile exploration.
The exhibit, which opened on February 10 at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. runs until April 30.
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