While he is best known for bas-relief replicas of Philippine churches in his early career stages, Anton Quisumbing’s (b.1970) recent works highlight experimentations beyond forming images. Navigating between sculpture and painting, he merges formalist approaches with playful and spontaneous candor as he excavates from memory and experience. Incorporating lines and color to illustrate what seems like cartographic landscapes on canvas, Quisumbing loosely translates the pictorial into three-dimensional forms. Primarily a sculptor, his stainless-steel pieces reveal objects and figures informed by personal narratives, which influenced his image-making process. Anchored in testing the malleability and strength of a single material and reintroducing the swift and undazzled manner in which a line can vigorously depict an image, Quisumbing surveys space by means of scale rather than defining it through color and structure. Thus, every angle represents a different facet tied to an idea while subconsciously directing the artist’s decisions in his process and studio production– where one jolts with energy, the other stands in confidence, and so forth. In this way, every physical presence makes room for contemplation and treads on the multitude of ways one can be perceived and understood.

Quisumbing studied Fine Arts (Sculpture) at the University of the Philippines, Diliman and has decades-long experience in the fabrication and furniture industry. His works have been featured in exhibitions at the Ayala Museum, Alliance française de Manille, and other art stages, such as the Visayas Art Fair (Cebu) and MoCAF (Manila). His works were presented abroad in Malaysia, Spain, and the United States. He lives and works between Cebu, Manila, and The Netherlands.