Expanse
signed and dated 2006 (lower left)
mixed media
54” x 42” (137 cm x 107 cm)

Karl-Heinz Stockheim, Philippine honorary consul-general for North Rhine Westphalia in Germany, writes in the foreword of Albor’s book “Immaterial”: “To do justice to the work of the artist Augusto Albor, it is necessary to let people speak who have known him for years and have dealt themselves intensively with his oeuvre.”

Stockheim continues: “The late Raymundo Albano, curator of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, described the artist’s early phase as being preoccupied with articulating a surface with great attentiveness while his current interest is directed toward the metaphysical.”

Because Albor’s minimalist abstract expressionism does not overwhelm his viewers with strong, brash colors and abrupt, confusing lines, his aesthetic speaks volumes to viewers that seek a calm, serene rendering of raw visual elements, in the tradition of the Dutch Piet Mondrian and the Russian artist and writer Kasimir Malevich. Albor spoke of these artists’ influences on his work. Mondrian’s grids and Malevich’s White on White (1918) are some of the Western art influences that inspired Albor because his affinity with their style, their school of thought, and their preference for rendering dynamism in a minimalist manner.