Aphro

14/07/2026

YAKISUGI is a commanding mixed-media exhibition that explores the captivating tension between human geometry and atmospheric volatility. Utilizing an intense physical palette of burnt wood, glass, and raw metal, the collection translates powerful daily natural phenomena-such as fire, rain, lightning, and wind-into highly structured, industrial landscapes.

Yakisugi invites viewers to look at the environment through a structural lens, questioning where natural chaos ends and human design begins.

By forcing the chaotic, unpredictable forces of weather into rigid geometric systems, the artist challenges viewers to examine how we perceive, measure, and attempt to contain the wild world around us.

Yakisugi
by Milo Naval
curated by Christina Quisumbing Ramilo

Opens on July 21, 2026
Tuesday, 4pm to 8pm

📍Aphro, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza

08/07/2026

Japanese artist Shoko Mafune brings an introspective and lyrical dimension to the collection. Her educational background in Industrial Chemistry cultivated an informed sensitivity to material behavior, deepened through training with master potters in Japan. Her eventual move to the Philippines, and later Australia, introduced new contexts that permeate her work, resulting in a practice that is simultaneously technically disciplined and emotionally nuanced.

Many of the works on view (1998–2010) were first exhibited in Manila through her long association with Galleria Duemila and Hiraya Gallery. They mark a period of exploration into the vessel as both container and body. Her recurring imagery of n**e female figures suggests an interior world, one that resists spectacle in favor of serene and dreamlike stillness. It is a meditation on the body as a carrier of memory and vulnerability.

Rather than dramatize the figure, Mafune renders it with restraint. Limbs are simplified, faces reduced to the barest indications of expression. The figures appear absorbed in private states of repose or gentle interaction, evoking a sense of psychological space rather than narrative action. In this way, her motifs align less with figuration as representation and more with figuration as atmosphere.

Mafune’s colors and surfaces further reinforce this poetic sensibility. She employs soft, muted palettes of creamy whites, pale earth tones, and deep blues. Her figurative reliefs echo the sinuous lines of Art Nouveau, integrating ornament and structure into a seamless whole. It is a delicateness that invites and rewards close looking.

Excerpt from the exhibition essay for “Slow Burn: Meditations in Clay” written by Stephanie Frondoso

On view until July 10, 2026

📍Aphro, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza

02/07/2026

Hadrian Mendoza, an experienced and esteemed Virginia-based stoneware potter, approaches clay as cultural archive. His practice bridges indigenous Philippine forms and contemporary abstraction inflected with political resonance. Works spanning 2008 to 2017 trace this range. He reinterprets the Manunggul jar, a precolonial vessel for ancient burial rites; his version proposes a more universal acceptance of the afterlife. His sculptural evocations of the bulul, the granary guardians of Northern Luzon, use restrained gesture and minimal form to translate animist reverence into felt, personal expression.

In his Dancing Bamboo series, vertical forms tilt in precarious harmony, embodying balance and growth. On the wall, red abstractions across a series of tiles shift tone dramatically, confronting viewers with thoughts on daily violence and the fragility of life in the Philippines. Mendoza’s material experiments have ranged from sourcing various ashes from storm-felled trees, sugarcane and bakeries that burn wood, to fusing melted glass bottles with ceramics in the kiln. These trials extend the conceptual weight of his works, embedding histories of place and loss into their very surfaces.

Mendoza’s role as organizer of Southeast Asian ceramic conferences further situates him within a broader regional discourse, fostering dialogue among more than 150 practitioners. He received his MFA at George Washington University (2017), where he was awarded the Alfred E. Steck Memorial Prize for Sculpture, and is a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council Humanities Fellowship Grant (2012). He has exhibited worldwide and his work is held in the collections of prestigious museums and institutions.

Excerpt from the exhibition essay for “Slow Burn: Meditations in Clay” written by Stephanie Frondoso

On view until July 10, 2026

📍Aphro, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza

17/06/2026

Two decades before her first show with Galleria Duemila, Nelfa Querubin had already laid crucial groundwork. Starting her career as a printmaker, she later transitioned to studio pottery in 1973, building her first kiln in Iloilo. Her early work was defined by discoveries with locally sourced clay and river sand, wood-firing experiments and lessons from the tactile immediacy of hand-built forms. Her pioneering efforts earned recognition, including the CCP Thirteen Artists Awards in 1981.

The body of work reflects her printmaking roots: surfaces carved, incised, scratched, impressed, and stamped, treated with layered glazes, stain washes, and pencil markings. The pieces echo the warm colors and lush textures of her tropical coastal hometown Miag-ao, with its vibrant coral reefs, sandy shores, and sun bleached rocks, along with the rocky mountainous terrain of her adopted American West, its changing seasons and dramatic quality of light. Upon relocating to Colorado in 1988, she further refined her practice, achieving technical and artistic mastery. The exhibited pieces (1997–2002) are from this mature period. Luminosity and chromatic clarity born of gas and electric firing distinguish these works from her earlier woodfired pieces.

Querubin’s celebrated career encompasses 20 solo exhibitions, 3 retrospectives, and 3 authored books. In 2022, the Nelfa Querubin Gallery opened at the UP Visayas Museum of Art and Cultural Heritage in Iloilo City.

Excerpt from the exhibition essay for "Slow Burn: Meditations in Clay", written by Stephanie Frondoso

On view until July 4, 2026

📍Aphro, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza

11/06/2026

28/05/2026

Slow Burn: Meditations in Clay

A special collaboration with Galleria Duemila, featuring Nelfa Querubin, Hadrian Mendoza and Shoko Mafune.

Curated by Stephanie Frondoso

On view until July 4, 2026

📍Aphro, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza

26/05/2026

We will be closed tomorrow in observance of Eid'l Adha holiday. Open again on May 28, 2026.

14/05/2026

Opening today!

Slow Burn: Meditations in Clay
Nelfa Querubin | Hadrian Mendoza | Shoko Mafune
curated by Stephanie Frondoso

📍Aphro, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza

06/05/2026

Slow Burn: Meditations in Clay

Aphro presents a special collaboration with Galleria Duemila, featuring pioneering Philippine ceramic artist Nelfa Querubin alongside esteemed studio potters Hadrian Mendoza and Shoko Mafune. Since the 1990s, Galleria Duemila has played a pivotal role in advancing ceramic practice through a sustained program of exhibitions and publications for these artists.

“Slow Burn: Meditations in Clay” gathers significant works spanning the late 1990s to 2017, a formative period when ceramics in the Philippines evolved from an experimental, craft-based position into its current critical place within the discourse of fine art. The exhibition foregrounds the material’s quiet intensity, tracing a history of creative transformation shaped by time, process, and sustained artistic inquiry.

Slow Burn: Meditations in Clay opens on May 14, 2026

curated by Stephanie Frondoso

📍Aphro, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza

13/02/2026

Artistry meets function. One-of-a-kind ceramics by Filipino hands.

𝙃𝙖𝙥𝙡𝙤𝙨 ceramics, available at Aphro

DM to inquire

📍AphroLiving, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza