Ongoing until June 18; Yuchengco Museum, RCBC Plaza corner Ayala and Senator Gil J. Puyat Avenues, Makati; for more information, call (02) 889-1234 or visit www.yuchengcomuseum.org
 
Yuchengco Museum is launching a new exhibition program that showcases rarely seen artworks from the private collections of esteemed art collectors, artists, and creative personalities. Through a series of special displays throughout 2016 to 2017, the museum will explore how and why collectors, artists, and creative personalities collect art, and share the stories behind them.
 
The first exhibition in the Choices series, entitled Light in the Darkness, features paintings and drawings by Danilo Arriola from the collection of the artist and his first collector and patron, Architect Dan Lichauco. Light in the Darkness also includes a site-specific installation of Arriola’s atelier, with curio cabinets of objects he uses in his artworks.
 
Both hailing from University of Santo Tomas, artist and architect share a love for the classical and somber, simplified subject matters that speak with symbolic meaning.
 
Arriola paints striking images of everyday objects: the unnoticeable is made majestic and timeless with presence. Using the technique of chiaroscuro that creates intense light and shadows on the objects, his paintings are somber reflections of life, death, presence, and mood. He shares with us the piercing beauty of objective subtly touched by light and always seen from the perspective of shadows.