In the bright world of artist Richard Arimado, characters look up while viewers look back.
Through the lens of nostalgia, the world looks simpler. Easier, even. It offers comfort in its own way, even if facts get clouded by sentimental subjectivity. The scenes in artist Richard Arimado’s latest solo exhibition Chronicles elicit these same feelings. Here we have Manila at a different time, clearly somewhere in the past yet never quite rooted in a particular place: what you get, instead, is a feeling or atmosphere. It’s tranquil, joyous, and contemplative—almost spiritual, if you observe closely.
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A Closer Look At Chronicles By Richard Arimado
Look Back
In Arimado’s paintings, figures dressed in period-specific clothing go about their business, selling wares, riding kalesas, flying kites, and watching dragon dancers in some part of Manila’s Chinatown. Philippine history plays a key role in these works, represented through sepia-toned backdrops reminiscent of old photographs, yet contrasted with bright candy-colored hues that provide a sense of modernity, as the artist puts it.
His process is intentional, his colors planned long before he starts on a piece, paints already mixed to create the exact hues he plots out. Arimado isn’t one to dwell on heavy themes, either. Characters are always wearing tranquil smiles, and scenes are set during the daylight hours—not a particular time of day, but certainly never in the evening.
The artist also recently began his foray into sculpture; he expresses how the tactility of the craft is nothing short of exciting after years of holding up a paintbrush. His figures run parallel to his paintings, their bronze bodies donning bright outfits, their ceramic heads always gazing up.
Look Up
As a viewer, you sense there was once movement in these works, but what you really see is a wondrous aftermath: a suspended state where people stop in their tracks, look up, and gaze at the ineffable. “They’re busy, but they’re surprised to find someone looking at them [from above],” he tells Lifestyle Asia. [Busy lang sila, pero nagulat sila na mayroon tumitingin sa kanila.]
Is it God? To Arimado, yes. Though it can be anything, really, depending on what strikes awe into your heart. What matters, again, is the intangible feeling: an epiphany of the divine in visual form. The artist recalls a fateful jeepney ride in Mindoro years ago. For one strange moment, its passengers all looked up at the sky—a singular, collective act that became his visual motif.
With his background in architecture, Arimado adeptly renders structures like buildings, providing heightened depth that emphasizes the concepts behind his works. Here, the viewer steps into the shoes of the divine, gazing back at the paintings’ figures, becoming a part of their larger story. There’s a shared intimacy in these works, despite the detachment associated with an aerial view.
“Arimado uses it instead to unify, to flatten hierarchies, to place vendor, traveler, and bystander on the same visual plane,” writes the exhibition’s statement. “It’s an egalitarian view, one that says every figure, no matter how small, is part of the bigger picture.”
Chronicles will run at Galerie Joaquin Rockwell from August 5 to 17, 2025. Galerie Joaquin Rockwell is located at the R3 Level of Power Plant Mall, Rockwell Center, Makati. For inquiries, contact +63915-4145502 or email [email protected].
Photos courtesy of Galerie Joaquin.
