Daily TribuneFilipino artist Jonathan Olazo reinterprets Claude Monet’s devotion to light and time in Light Receptacle Café — a luminous exhibition at the Alliance Française de Manille that bridges Impressionist inspiration and contemporary Filipino vision.
Jonathan Olazo with one of his artworks on display.
Jonathan Olazo's artworks at the 'Light Receptacle Café' exhibit.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SEYMOUR BARROS SANCHEZ
Kenji and Amanda Yuchengco, Sheila Paras, Rosita Lara Lumagui, Lisa Tinio-Bayot, curator Lyn Olazo, artist Jonathan Olazo, Dr. Eric Zerrudo, Olivier Dintinger, Jore.
Filipino artist Jonathan Olazo reimagines the devotion of French master Claude Monet to light and time in his latest exhibition, Light Receptacle Café, offering a contemplative fusion of Impressionist sensibility and contemporary Filipino vision.
Opened on 18 October at the Alliance Française de Manille (AFM), the show is a testament to Olazo’s distinct artistic language—his ability to translate the ephemeral play of light into textured narratives of memory and experience.
Through layered acrylic and mixed-media works, Olazo explores the enduring fascination with luminosity that Monet so famously championed. But while the French painter captured light on water lilies and cathedrals, Olazo finds it in the rhythms of modern life—turning illumination itself into both subject and metaphor.
Curated by his wife, Lyn Yusi-Olazo, a painter and art conservator, the exhibition invites viewers to see light as a vessel of perception and emotion. “Jonathan gathers nuances and signs from his daily life and surroundings, bringing them into his paintings,” Lyn explained. “He approaches art like a DJ, sampling visual cues and collaging them into layered compositions.”
Guests at the opening lauded the artist’s evocative approach. Rosita Lara “Otty” Lumagui, managing director of Worldwide Resource Solutions Philippines Inc. and CEO of Bocca—the event’s food sponsor—praised how Olazo’s works “oscillate between a vigorous masculinity and a delicate femininity, entirely dependent on the viewer’s register and interpretation.”
AFM executive director Olivier Dintinger shared that the exhibition transported him back to Paris and the Musée Marmottan, where he first encountered Monet’s works, while Dr. Eric Zerrudo, executive director of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, noted the historical connection: “Filipino heroes in the 19th century were exposed to Impressionism in Paris. Olazo continues that dialogue—capturing the same interplay of light and temporality.”
Architect and art advocate Michael “Mico” Liwanag also commended the artist’s discipline, saying he has seen Olazo “grow as an artist who constantly pushes boundaries.”
Olazo’s influences extend beyond French painting to French intellectual life. A longtime admirer of Roland Barthes and Charles Baudelaire, he finds kinship in Baudelaire’s idea of the flâneur—the observer who discovers poetry and meaning in the everyday. His camera, too, becomes an extension of this gaze; he often draws inspiration from his photographs of Metro Manila, finding in them the same quiet majesty that Monet once found in the French countryside.
For those who seek beauty in movement, abstraction, and the passage of time, Light Receptacle Café offers an intimate reflection on perception itself. Olazo’s art invites viewers to witness what happens when light—fleeting, mysterious, and alive—is allowed to tell its own stories.
Light Receptacle Café runs until 15 November at the Alliance Française de Manille, 209 Nicanor Garcia Street, Bel-Air II, Makati City.
