Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA) Singapore is proud to present Philippine curator and conceptual art practitioner, Nilo Ilarde (b. 1960) 17th solo show of recent works in Singapore. The show is organized in collaboration with Finale Art File in Manila.

Entitled The Easiest Routine to the Difficulty, the exhibition is a collection of 25 small collage works. Ilarde utilizes this medium as a platform to pursue the critique of Modernist art and to pose questions regarding originality, authorship and the production of meaning in contemporary art.

For this show, Ilarde produces collages through reassembling materials that are often used in artistic production, including discarded pencils, rulers and other measuring implements, hooks, maquettes and rough sketches. He juxtaposes these with other found objects related to the mechanical reproduction of visual images: coloring pages, jigsaw puzzles and cut- outs, for instance. Piling on thick layers of paint freshly squeezed through tubes, Ilarde makes use of pigment as an almost sculptural material. Ilarde's collages also resist complete containment by intentionally going beyond the borders of uniform frames.

Over the past decade, Ilarde has alterated between exhibitions comprised of massive and life-sized installation pieces and shows featuring smaller collage-based works. The latter is connected to Ilarde's larger and more elaborate visual projects in the ways that they self- consciously examine or demonstrate the processes of artistic production.

Nilo Ilarde has held 17 one-man exhibitions since 1987 and has participated in numerous group shows in the Philippines and in Singapore. He first made a mark in the Philippine art scene as a young artist-curator in the early 1980s, after being commended in the Young Arts in Asia Now exhibition at the Hong Kong Art Center in 1980 and winning the Art Association of the Philippines competition (Painting category) a year later. He has since then served as a curator for numerous exhibitions of Philippine art from 1980 to the present, including shows at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts and Finale Art File. He currently lives and works in Makati City, Manila.