'Duetto' opens on June 27

Two members of the Saturday Group of Artists, Migs Villanueva and Anna de Leon are mounting Duetto, a joint exhibition of their recent paintings at Galerie Stephanie. The show which opens at 7 p.m. on June 27, celebrates the friendship of the artists. Villanueva and De Leon have been best of friends since their grade school days. It will showcase 20 works with10 art pieces from each artist.

Duetto presents what they have in common and the ways they differ. The similarity is shown on the subjects chosen for the exhibition such as music and art. The distinction would be in the way their works are expressed and interpreted, the medium chosen and the colors and composition selected.

The collection displays two visions. One of which is the playful surrealism of De Leon, as seen in her depiction of pairs of quail eggs, or a singular leaf in a tangle of string. Her clean and polished minimalism approach, she says tease the audience's curiosity. Villanueva, who is also a Palanca awardee and multi-awarded writer, depicts emotion through motion and color.

A quote from the Saturday Group Art Book will best describe her aesthetics, "In painting as in writing, Migs gives way to unplanned impulses where thoughts and feelings she might not even be aware of have a way of becoming form. While she goes for a very illustrative effect when writing stories, in her visual art, she takes on a reductive sensibility that reduces all illustration into distilled essence."