Daily TribuneFull Circle features Hans Brumann, Impy Pilapil and Tony Gonzales, and proposes continuity — a sense that beginnings never quite leave us and that the past, when re-entered, can generate new clarity.
WAVE V, Impy Pilapil, 2002, Wood and stainless steel.
THE FORT III, Hans Brumann, Molave and Kamagong wood.
ASTRA Gratia II, Impy Pilapil, 2025, stone, steel and glass.
ASTRA Gratia III, Impy Pilapil, 2025, stone, steel and glass.
SURGE, Impy Pilapil, 2026, Stone, steel, and glass.
UNTITLED, Tony Gonzales, 2026, Acrylic on canvas.
XYZ, Hans Brumann, 2016, Painted steel on Molave base.
BARONG-BARONG V, Hans Brumann, 2020, Narra, Molave, Yakal, Tanguile, Kamagong, Oakwood, Coral and Green Resin.
BIRD, Hans Brumann, 2016, Painted steel with Molave base.
UNTITLED, Tony Gonzales, 2025, Acrylic on canvas.
UNTITLED, Tony Gonzales, 2026, Acrylic on canvas.
UNTITLED, (‘Blue Series’ Collection), Tony Gonzales Acrylic on canvas.
At Galerie Hans Brumann, Full Circle spotlights three artists whose firm practices and resolute execution are deeply anchored in intuition and discipline: Hans Brumann, Imelda “Impy” Pilapil, and Tony Gonzales.
The much-awaited exhibition proposes a return — not as repetition, but as renewal — where early impulses, various materials, and ways of seeing are brought back into the present. Across sculptures, installations, and paintings, the show reads like an honest conversation on how form evolves, and how memory settles into matter. And how time refines both.
Brumann’s storied career spans more than half a century, molded by his comprehensive training as a master jeweler and by a life that carried him from Switzerland to the Philippines. Known for treating gold and gemstones with the same seriousness he grants to wood or mother of pearl, he has developed an admirable visual language grounded in perfect balance and curated proportions.
In Full Circle, his wood works reflect long apprenticeship to final structure. The compositions carry the precise logic of jewelry, which he terms “miniature architecture,” where every line holds weight and every surface earns its place — just like modern-day buildings. His sensibility — born from metal and stone aligns with the exhibition’s theme of return: a revisiting of foundational manners of seeing, where curiosity and craft meet once again.
Pilapil approaches form from a different direction. She begins as she listens to stone, to water, to the slow intelligence of materials. Her artist statement frames the exhibition as an ongoing cycle: from initial sketch to final substance, from early experiments to mature clarity.
In her section titled Astra Gratia, Pilapil imagines the movement of waves and stars as part of the same choreography. Foam loops into constellations, while droplets briefly flare as distant lights before it ebbs back to the sea.
This language of rise and fall, of orbit and return, fits neatly within Full Circle. Her wire and glass sculptures suggest that grace is not imposed but discovered. The metal pieces turns industrial steel and dense stone into round patterns, as if to denote the repetition — or perhaps, the recursion of the theme.
Though Gonzales joins the exhibition through his paintings, his background includes years as a product designer, a discipline which sharpened his sense of structure. As an abstractionist, he works sans a fixed image in mind, treating the canvas as a field where instinct, travel and memory collect. His method, which he calls patong-patong — layer upon layer — builds interesting surfaces through various strokes, which tell their own stories, each with different meanings. A variety of vivid colors are carefully thrown and meticulously dragged, then partially restrained by guiding lines or studied blocks which suggest an underlying order.
In the context of Full Circle, Gonzales’ obras read as the human middle ground between Brumann’s measured construction and Pilapil’s cosmic drift. His paintings carry traces of faint figures made up of deliberate yet random-looking brushstrokes — or did my eyes just fool me? It certainly made me pause to attempt to figure out the messages behind each canvas. This constant shift between elements — complimentary and contrasting — further compounds on the ethos of Full Circle, as I retraced my trail of thought from start to end, until I discovered the answers!
Together, the three artists describe a shared arc. Brumann returns to the fundamentals of line and balance shaped by decades of craft. Pilapil artistically circles back to the core elements of life. Gonzales reminds us of all the experiences in between the fundamental and the grandiose.
In all, Full Circle proposes continuity — a sense that beginnings never quite leave us, and that the past, when re-entered, can generate new clarity. In this gathering, return becomes less about going back and more about seeing again, with time as a collaborator rather than an obstacle.
Let the pieces speak for themselves.
!Enhorabuena, Hans Brumann, Impy Pilapil and Tony Gonzales!
