Artist’s Statement

In this exhibition, I tackle my current, as well as lifelong artistic concern, with a three-pronged attack: the COMBINES series, the TUTTI-FRUTTI series: Remembering Chabet and the SUITCASE SUITE series.

COMBINES deals with my concern with Shape as Art and the combination thereof, of two or multiple shapes or frames to form a third shape or image. From the very beginning of my abstract career, through my woodcuts, silkscreens and digital art, I have pushed the limits of my art to address these issues of shape, form, and color.

The TUTTI-FRUTTI Series: Remembering Bobby Chabet, recalls my friendship with conceptual art guru, the late Roberto “Bobby” Chabet.

Chabet, in a snide comment, called the Saturday Group, then led by National Artist, Hernando Ocampo as the “Tutti-Frutti Gang” because of their penchant for eating ice cream at their weekly Saturday meetings at Taza de Oro. I was both a member of the Saturday Group and later of Chabet’s  conceptual art group called Shop #6. The Tutti-Frutti Series deals with my concern with color fields as objects.

The SUITCASE SUITE is my latest interest — found objects as art ala Duchamp. I combine industrial materials, such as nuts & bolts and screws and cabinet steel sliders, wood floor samples, duct tape, industrial paints and lacquers and place them in the ready-made enclosures of Samsonite suitcases or attache cases.

Rodolfo Samonte has exhibited world-wide, launching solo exhibitions in Amsterdam, Cleveland and Los Angeles (USA), Bogota (Colombia) and Manila, Philippines. Samonte is in the collection of the Philippine National Museum, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Museo the Oro (Bogota, Colombia) and the Tamayo Museum, Mexico City among others.