Photograph of Roberto Chabet's Other Planets in the exhibition 'To Be Continued' at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, 19 January - 31 March 2012.

The work is a reconstruction of one of the paintings in Chabet's solo exhibition 'Other Planets' at West Gallery in 1993. The original work was smaller in size; the updated version was made longer specifically for the CCP 4th Floor Hallway.

'To Be Continued' is a landmark survey exhibition of Chabet's works, which gathers seminal pieces such as Russian Paintings (1984) and Cargo and Decoy (1989), as well as other works that utilise plywood boards, a material, which has become not only the surface and support of his paintings and installations, but to a large extent their subject matter and content. He first used plywood in his early kinetic sculptures in the 1970s, but it was in the 80s when he adapted the material to painting. Breaking away from the rigid formalism of Modernism, his seemingly ‘purely’ geometric and abstract plywood constructions are often juxtaposed with particular everyday objects that would appear and re-appear in his other installations and become part of his familiar inventory of anxious objects. Highlighting process and the provisional nature of these works, the exhibition illuminates a key aspect of Chabet’s practice, which gives precedence to the fugitive and contingent nature of art.

Also included in the CCP mounting are a selection from Chabet’s China Collages (1980 – 1990), a series of large collages done over a ten-year period; Bakawan (1974), a closed door installation in the CCP Small Gallery; the Apple Painting Lesson (1983), an early collaborative work with over forty artists; and Day and Night (2011), the artist’s most recent installation. The CCP Little Theater Curtain, which was designed by Chabet, is also highlighted. 

'To Be Continued' was presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore - La Salle College of the Arts on January 2011 and Osage Kwun Tong on August 2011. The exhibition returned to Manila as the final installation of 'Roberto Chabet: Fifty Years,' a year-long series of exhibitions organised by King Kong Art Projects Unlimited in various venues in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Manila from 2011 - 2012.