Pale Blue Memo

This small work by Roberto Chabet is similar to his large-scale 2009 work, 10,000 paintings I must paint before I die. These were A4 sized monochromatic paintings in primary colors, of clipboards attached to canvases. Chabet’s work is a playful interpretation of the Minimalist aesthetic which negated figuration in favor of abstraction, expressed as simplified forms like squares and rectangles, and favored the use of ready-made objects.

Chabet is known as the Father of Conceptual Art in the Philippines and was a teacher and mentor to the next generation of contemporary artists from the 1990s who pushed the boundaries of art and art-making in the Philippines like Geraldine Javier, Nona Garcia, Annie Cabigting, and Poklong Anading.