By Deni Rose M. Afinidad-Bernardo
From visual arts, artists Juvenal Sansó and Marge Organo have expanded their worlds into book publishing.
Organo’s comprehensive book, an anthology that gathers her earliest experiments to her most recent achievements, was launched in tandem with her A Look into the Prism exhibit, on view until yesterday at Galerie Joaquin Rockwell in Makati City.
The exhibition became both a survey and a summation of a life devoted to mastering one of the most demanding materials in contemporary art. Inspired by the publication and conceived as its living counterpart, the exhibition offered visitors an intimate encounter with the evolution of her visual language, tracing how each series opened new pathways for light, emotion and form.
Organo’s glass works have long been distinguished by their ability to occupy the liminal space between fragility and permanence. In this exhibition, these qualities manifested through glass sculptures that revealed how the artist negotiates weight and air, translucency and solidity. Across the varied series represented, one perceives her persistent interest in how illumination can shift meaning — a single refraction creating a new way of seeing.
The accompanying book deepens this understanding. By assembling the arc of Organo’s practice, it underscores how each phase of her career contributes to a larger inquiry into inner life. The early series demonstrate her search for equilibrium in form, while the more recent works expand toward sculptural boldness, showing a maturity grounded in technical confidence. The inclusion of her latest “Balloon Dogs” and Marian-inspired works situates these new explorations within the larger sweep of her artistic journey. Together, the exhibition and the publication illuminate her commitment to refining the language of glass, treating it as both medium and metaphor.
Fundacion Sansó, on the other hand, proudly announced the release of Sansó: Prized and Personal, a major 464-page volume that stands as the most extensive publication ever produced on the Presidential Medal of Merit award recipient.
Featuring over 600 full-color images of Sansó’s artworks — many photographed and published for the very first time — the book offers an unprecedented visual archive that spans the artist’s vast and varied career.
The book also gathers a decade’s worth of rare interviews with Sansó himself, conducted by leading cultural voices such as Ray Albano, Cid Reyes and Ambeth Ocampo. These intimate conversations, many of them previously inaccessible, provide firsthand insight into Sansó’s creative philosophy, his evolution as an artist and the lived experiences that shaped his oeuvre.
The volume also includes a comprehensive timeline of Sansó’s life and work written by art historian Reuben Ramas-Cañete, Ph.D., with Matthew Lopez. This scholarly chronology anchors the book with contextual rigor, mapping the artist’s early formation, his European phases, his Black Period, his celebrated Brittany landscapes and his late-career flowering.
Adding to this rich tapestry are reflections from nine distinguished collectors — former Senate president Miguel Zubiri, Pepper Teehankee, Eliot and Cherry Maguan, Raffy Simpao, Jack Teotico, Jeffrey V. Dayrit, Jr. and Marlon and Marissa Sanchez — who reveal why Sansó’s works remain deeply coveted. Their essays blend connoisseurship with personal narrative, shedding light on the emotional resonance, technical mastery and enduring appeal that make Sansó a presence in Philippine art.
“Sansó: Prized and Personal is unlike any book we have produced,” says Fundacion Sansó director Ricky Francisco in a statement. “It reveals Sansó through multiple, interlocking perspectives: the artist in his own words, the artworks in their fullest range, the scholars who have studied him and the collectors whose lives have been touched by his art. It is a celebration not just of his legacy, but of the community that has grown around it.”
Completed shortly after Sansó’s passing on 28 March, the book stands as a tribute to an artist who considered the Philippines his true home. It reflects Fundacion Sansó’s ongoing commitment to preserving not only the works he created, but the stories, relationships and histories that surround them.