Yavuz Fine Art is pleased to present Filipino artist Paulo Vinluan in his first solo exhibition in Singapore. Comprising paintings, drawings, and an animation video, Wish You Were Here explores the theme of movement, both the action and the change in one’s location.

Over the past year and a half, Vinluan has been shuttling back and forth between New York, where he lives and works, and his family home in Manila. He has to constantly adapt to daily routines only to have to leave again and start anew, and often wishes for the convenience of New York in the Philippines, or the familiarity of Manila in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Referencing souvenir postcards and the familiar sentiments printed on them – generic greetings like Wish you were here and Having a great time, accompanied by picture perfect images of landmarks – Vinluan’s recent body of works expresses his ambivalence towards his bi-continental lifestyle.

Renowned for his colourful comic–style imagery, Wish You Were Here is about wanting to be in one place, rather than two places at the same time. It serves as the artist’s “postcard sentiment” for our struggle to find a permanent place that is both exactly where we should be and want to be. Often, we find ourselves unable to choose between two places, stuck in a cycle of arriving at one destination only to want to go back to where we had come from. Vinluan is interested in this back and forth movement, as the human condition constantly negotiates and redirects itself between two points.

Paulo Vinluan was born in 1980 in New York and raised in the Philippines. He graduated from the University of the Philippines with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and studied at the Pratt Institute in New York. 2003 marked his first solo show in Manila, followed by exhibitions across the US, Europe and Asia. He lives and works between Brooklyn and Manila.

Image: © Paulo Vinluan, Yavuz Fine Art