BenCab’s solo sculpture exhibit, ‘In Honor of Form,’ runs until Nov. 22, 2026 at Gajah Gallery Manila.
A septuagenarian painter, who made a name for himself as one of the leading figures in figurative expressionism, once told a gathering of fellow artists that the main reason veterans like him in their twilight years eventually shift to non-representational art was not because it was the zenith of creativity.
“Most of the time, it’s because of rayuma, gout, or crippling arthritis that come with aging,” said the artist, who shall not be named for privacy reasons, although it was said in good humor during an opening cocktail for an installation art exhibit. “It’s hard to hold paintbrushes so the easiest bluff would be to do abstract, or something like drip painting, buhos lang ng buhos, wasiwas lang ng wasiwas,”
I am reminded of this incident, because one of his older contemporaries has just disproved that misconception.
At 84, National Artist for Visual Arts Benedicto “BenCab” Cabrera is far from setting aside his paintbrushes and easels to make a shift to the drip-and-splatter technique. He did something better by stepping out of the canvas.
For the past three years, he has been focused—in a literal sense—on the bigger and heavier stuff: bronze sculpture.
‘In Honor of Form’ exhibition view
Running until Nov. 22, 2026 at Gajah Gallery Manila is BenCab’s solo exhibit, In Honor of Form, which features new large-scale sculptural pieces, each paired with the paintings that inspired them.
Curated by Dannie R. Alvarez, the solo exhibition highlights 11 bronze sculptures that BenCab finished in collaboration with Yogya Art Lab (YAL) in Yogyakarta, described as “the beating heart of the art scene” in Indonesia.
Co-founded by Gajah Gallery director Jasdeep Sandhu and Indonesian artist Yunizar, YAL was established to provide artists with a dedicated space to experiment with new mediums and to ensure access to high-quality materials. Under the direction of foundry director James Page, YAL has evolved into a world-class foundry and production house.
Gajah Gallery was established in 1996 to showcase Southeast Asian artists and has branches in Singapore, Jakarta, and Yogyakarta in Indonesia. It was only in November 2025 that Gajah Gallery Manila opened, and BenCab is the first National Artist to hold a solo exhibit.
“They were the ones who approached and asked me back in 2023, and I said ‘Sure’ at once,” BenCab told The Diarist.ph.
Over the years, he has been known for exploring his subjects in various media, from painting to print to multimedia to sculpture.
This time, he recreated some of his subjects from painting directly to sculpture. Just like in some magic-realist movies—Velvet Buzzsaw, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams—when the figures in a painting suddenly come to life. Or think of Mona Lisa stepping out of the frame and sitting on a bench in Ayala Triangle Park, drinking macha green tea. BenCab does something like that. Now, Sabel is someone you can touch for curiosity’s sake and have selfies with.
Joaquin Singson, manager of Gajah Gallery Manila, and National Artist for Visual Arts BenCab at the open-air co-working space of NBS Park
“Besides the 11 life-sized sculptures, there are those two little ones that are on loan from BenCab Museum,” Joaquin “Wax” Singson, manager of Gajah Gallery Manila, told The Diarist.ph on October 18, Sunday afternoon, when the exhibit opened.
The handspan-sized ‘Reclining Nude’ with the 2-meter-high ‘Sabel ‘behind it
He was describing the 1978 bronze sculpture titled, well, Untitled, which measures 28.5 x 15.5 x 13 cm, about a handspan, showing a miniature Venus de Milo-like woman without legs. The other “little one” is from a series of bronze-cast sculptures titled Reclining Nude. This piece measures 20.5 x 27.5 x 17 cm, a smaller handspan, depicting a naked man without legs and arms, raising his right thigh as if partly showing his derrière.
“Everything you see here, the large-scale sculptures, it’s the first time they’re being exhibited in the Philippines,” said Singson. “They were done in YAL in Yogyakarta. Some of them were actually finished only this year,” he describes the 11 other bronze sculptures on display at the very spacious 700-sqm, 12-m-high exhibit area.
Gajah Gallery Manila would like to call the solo show the “first formal presentation BenCab’s sculptural practice.”
During BenCab’s college years at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts in Diliman, Quezon City, he learned the basics of sculpture using clay under sculptor Anastacio Caedo.
As a young up-and-coming artist based in London, he started doing resin sculptures in 1969 and the early 1970s, the same time he was getting familiar with “etchings, aquatints, and silkscreens,” as recounted by his ex-wife Caroline Kennedy.
BenCab’s collaboration with YAL and Gajah Gallery started in 2023 with the 2 m-high Sabel sculpture.
In a story for The Diarist.ph in 2024, BenCab described how it all began: “First, I worked with clay, then the casting in bronze. It’s a sculpture that will last 200 years, long after I’m gone.”
At first, many thought the Sabel sculpture would be initially on display in Gajah Gallery Singapore, but as it turned out, Gajah Gallery opened a branch in Manila.
Two years later, BenCab’s admirers as well as curious first-timers can now see, touch, have selfies with the three-dimensional Sabel, together with other new masterpieces developed over three years, from 2023 to 2026.
Greeting gallery visitors from the entrance are two bronze renditions of Lovers, patterned after BenCab’s 1993 painting that shows a man and a woman in a “delirious dance, their hands gripping each other” like some sensual tango. The small Lovers measures 90 x 43 x 34 cm and the bigger piece measures 183 x 76 x 70 cm.
‘Reunion,’ acrylic on canvas, 1994
‘Reunion’ is the largest sculpture in the exhibit.
The largest is Reunion, finished only this year, measuring 208 x 158 x 118 cm. It is inspired by the 1994 acrylic-on-canvas painting of the same title, depicting an overseas Filipino worker coming home from long years of working abroad, now in a tight embrace with his wife and two grown-up kids. It’s a scene we usually see in airport lobbies.
‘Two Filipinas in the Era of Multinationals’ (detail view)
Two Filipinas in the Era of Multinationals (2026, measures 90.5 x 55 x 36.5 cm) has two women in traje de mestiza, adorned with modern gadgets. One has wired earphones and the other carries what looks like a portable cassette player/recorder with AM/FM radio so common in the 1980s.
‘The Edsa Event,’ a 1986 etching, measures 32 x 24 cm.
BenCab could have used a smartphone, and equipped the two Filipinas listening to music with Bluetooth wireless headphones. Then again, this bronze sculpture is based on the 1986 artwork titled The Edsa Event, an etching measuring 32 x 24 cm, which portrays two young women in the crowd witnessing the ousting of dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. during the First Edsa People Power Revolution.
Closer view of ‘Three Muses’
The big and smaller ‘Dance Movements’
Three Muses features “a trifecta of women, each ensconced in a whirl of fabric that has become indicative of BenCab’s signature style.” Completed in 2024 at the YAL foundry and measuring 70 x 60 x 45 cm, it is inspired by the 2017 acrylic-on-canvas painting of the same title on loan to Gajah Gallery Manila from the BenCab Museum. Dance Movement, finished in 2026 and measuring 41 x 33 x 13 cm, was based on the 2016 painting Sabel in Motion.
‘Mother’s Love’ was inspired by the ‘Madonna V’ painting.
Mother’s Love (2025), 38 x 35 x 90 cm, shows a mother carrying her toddler son on her right shoulder as she looks up to the sky. Besides Sabel, BenCab is known for his own interpretations of Madonna and Child.
Mother’s Love is the sculptural rendition of his Madonna V painting from his 2015 exhibit at the BenCab Museum, also depicting “a child seated on his mother’s shoulders, their faces lit with gentle, relaxed smiles. Her hands meet above their heads, as though she were caught in the motion of shifting him to sit astride her shoulders.”
And then there’s the famous 2008 masterpiece, the statement-size pastel-on-Arches paper artwork titled Nude Scroll. It is a montage of nude drawings and illustrations mounted on the wall featuring female models who posed for BenCab over the years. Measuring about 27 feet long and 4 feet wide, it was first exhibited in 2016 as the highlight of a retrospective titled BenCab Redux at the UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center, shown together with another long-format large-scale drawing titled Gestures and Nuances, which depicts normal activities of common folks.
Right in front of Nude Scroll is not a tableau of nude sculptures, but the elegant Walk-By-The-Sea, finished in early 2026, measuring 178 x 88 x 60 cm. It shows a woman in green baro’t saya with her long flowing hair, as if blown by the sea breeze. It is based on a 1999 painting of the same title, depicting the wife of a fisherman waiting on the shore “with a wish for his safe return.”
To know more about BenCab and his creative process, there’s an upcoming talk with art historian and curator Patrick Flores on Nov. 5, 2026, Thursday, from 2 to 4 pm at Gajah Gallery Manila. BenCab told The Diarist.ph he will be present at the talk.
The Gajah Gallery Manila is open from 11 am to 7 pm on weekdays, 11 am to 6 pm on weekends. It is located at the new Gen Z-favorite hangout called NBS Park, located at 125 Pioneer Street in Mandaluyong City.
NBS Park is where you can find the much-talked-about 24/7 book vending machine, the first of its kind in the Philippines. There is a book rack where you can pick a title and read for free in the adjacent co-working space area.
There are restaurants and cafes where you can—as how GenZs would term it—do some “performative reading” or talk about art while on Instagram/Facebook live.
NBS Park is the “in” place to be, starting with Gajah Gallery. Follow its socials for updates.
