"In the collection, Montera works with all the painterly techniques he has acquired from here and from the conditions he worked with while he was abroad. Letting his creativity loose, he combines his reductive technique with his earlier additive techniques of building texture and using straight swathes, lines, and grids that have largely been absent in his work while he was in Taiwan, which gives many of the works in this exhibition a solidity and definiteness which were eschewed in his “second phase” works.

His somber colors are giving way to more tropical colors, hinting not only at the accelerated pace of weathering, but of abundance, and the frenetic history-making that his present condition, and indeed our own country’s, is experiencing, which makes it harder to examine and be critical of.

Perhaps, more than the certainty of the realistic painting, Montera’s works are more attuned to the zeitgeist of our times where certainty is a luxury, but the will to carry on, despite manifold disparities, is always apparent."

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Artist Profile

Born: 1972

Hometown: Cebu City, Philippines

Based in: Cebu City, Philippines

Dennis “Sio” Montera is a practicing visual artist and educator. His art, which he dubs as process-oriented abstraction, narrates the sights, sounds, interactions and experiences, which he interprets in acrylics, combined with non-traditional materials.

The abstract expressionist hails from Cebu and has spent more than a decade as a full-time Associate Professor for the Fine Arts Program of the University of the Philippines. Aside from being part of the academe, Montera also believes in the community art development being the past president of Pusod Cebu Visual Artists, Inc. a founding
member of the Creative Cebu Council Inc, and the current Vice-Head of the Committee on Visual Arts of the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts.

His works have been noticed in the local and international art communities. In 2010, his piece was given the Grand Prize for the GSIS Painting Competition. The following year, his work was awarded the Visayas Juror’s Choice of the Philippine Art Awards 2011. He also earned the Most Outstanding Achievement in Creative Work from the University of the Philippines’ Chancellor’s Award twice – on 2008 and 2010. Internationally, the artist
regularly represents the Philippines. In 2012 alone, his works was exhibited in the 26th Asian International Art Exhibition in Seoul, Korea, in the 4th East Java Fine Art Biennale in Surabaya, Indonesia, and in the 5th Beijing International Art Biennale in China. Last 2013, he was awarded an Artist in Residence Program by the Association Le Cent, Établissement Culturel Solidaire in Paris, France.

Currently based in Taiwan to finish his Doctorate in Creative Industries Design in National Cheng Kung University, Montera regularly joins exhibits in the Philippines and abroad. His abstract expressionist works are being patronized by collectors world-wide.