Jose Olarte's first solo exhibition with MONO8 examines the nuisances of power and its individual and collective impact. Raised in an environment familiar with the renewable energy industry, Olarte begins by assessing its structures and operations as a starting point of this inquiry. The exhibition is an ensemble of new and recent works produced as he continues his research of the two oldest embankment dams in the country: Angat in Bulacan and Caliraya in Laguna. Gyre Dominion attempts to align personal tensions and dilemmas with the shared struggle to understand the ironies of progress.
Jose Olarte (b.1993) is an independent filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist, and human rights activist based in Metro Manila, Philippines who works mainly with photography, video, and new media.. His films have been screened at the In Signes Nui Film Festival in Paris (2017), the Interfilm Festival in Berlin (2017), the Globe International Film Festival (GiFF) (2019), and at the 31st and the 32nd Gawad Alternatibo Experimental Film Festival (2019, 2020). His practice involves research, immersion, and community based initiatives with artist-activist groups while his body of works are meant to incite and inspire discourse about collective existence within power structures through slogans and public demands embedded into his work. Through art, Olarte assumes the role of an observer, ally, and propagandist, who makes use of images and objects derived from unfortunate events in the hidden narratives of Philippine history. He speaks to and with the political and strange aesthetics of his generation of artists, activists, designers, musicians, and film-makers through collaborations, exhibitions across Manila, and his production company Barrio99. His interdisciplinary practice has recently extended into sculptures and installations in the style of Arte Povera.
Selected Works from Gyre Dominion
