It was an auspicious start to the week as we reached the mid-year mark of our auction calendar with an exceptionally strong sale. Still ecstatic from record after record being set, most notably the Anita Magsaysay-Ho egg tempera that sold at a new price benchmark surpassing previous sales of the artist’s works by 300 percent, I and my son Joaquin who is starting his traineeship at Salcedo while on summer break from his college studies, made our way to Taipei for the inaugural international exhibition of Salcedo Private View, our gallery and private sale arm.

This is a major milestone for the company as we expand into foreign markets. And what could be a better way to start things off than with a show that features no less than leading contemporary Filipino visual artist Junyee, the ‘Father of Philippine Installation Art’ — this event being a precursor to the artist’s year-long solo exhibition planned for the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ reopening sometime next year.

The Taipei exhibition is a major milestone for Junyee as well. Titled In Darkness, The Stars, it features the artist’s soot paintings which have never been shown outside of the Philippines.

Born Luis Yee Jr. in Agusan del Norte, Mindanao, Junyee left for Manila to study fine arts at the University of the Philippines, where he was mentored by National Artist Napoleon Abueva. The artistic veins of his practice reveal his explorations of materiality and a preference for organic or indigenous elements to convey the Filipino identity, evident as early as 1982 when Junyee exhibited Wood Things at the 12th Paris Biennale. One of his latest site-specific installations, Kwarantin (which opened at the Vargas Museum in July of 2020), shows the artist’s enduring preference for natural materials, making use of bamboo to express the uncertainties and fears that we all faced during the time of the pandemic.

The year 2020 proved to be quite a memorable one for the artist, the year when he received the highest accolade from the Cultural Center of the Philippines — the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining — to become the first artist from Mindanao to have received the award.

Though he is renowned for his monumental installations, Junyee’s Taipei exhibition signals a return to more intimately scaled works. For the show, Junyee created 12 wall-bound pieces that foreground his use of soot as a painterly medium. Through meticulous technical skill, he uses this unique material to construct ethereal abstract landscapes, inviting viewers on a transcendent journey beyond conventional artistic confines.