Posts

The Third Place of Taste: Collecting Identity in Metro Art Markets

-
Image
The Third Place of Taste: Collecting Identity in Metro Art Markets  Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ March 12, 2026 An Essay There is a peculiar alchemy that transfigures a slab of canvas, a sheet of paper, a block of bronze into a thing that matters in a city. It is not merely pigment or metal. It is a social contract, a wager on taste, a ritual of recognition. In metro cities—those dense, humming organisms where anonymity and aspiration coexist in uneasy truce—collecting art becomes less an act of acquisition than a choreography of identity. The collector who buys a painting is not simply purchasing an object; they are purchasing a narrative about who they are, who they wish to be, and who they want others to believe they are. This is not a cynical observation. It is humane, because it recognizes that humans are storytelling animals; it is academic, because it can be modeled and historicized; it is esoteric, because the rituals and codes that govern taste are often invisible to those outs...
Post a Comment
Read more

Retirement in the Philippines

-
Image
Retirement in the Philippines Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ March 11, 2026 There is a peculiar modern melancholy in the sentence: Who doesn't know where their retirement home in the Philippines when they reach 60. It reads like a riddle with a missing clause, a confession half-formed and left to drift in the humid air of a tropical afternoon. The premise that follows—of inherited houses, of being an only child without children, of the temptation to “wing it” with short-term rentals—maps a topology of anxieties that is at once personal and emblematic of larger social currents. This essay treats that topology with equal parts scholarly curiosity and intimate tenderness: it will analyze, narrate, and finally disconfirm the alternative that improvisation is a sufficient strategy for the uncertain geography of later life. --- The Sociology of Unanchored Futures From a sociological vantage, retirement is not merely a temporal marker but a spatial reconfiguration. Where one lives at sixty and b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Congress North Gate Art Opening

-
Image
Congress North Gate Art Opening Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ March 9, 2026 - -- If you like my any of my concept research, writing explorations, art works and/or simple writings please support me by sending me a coffee treat at my paypal amielgeraldroldan.paypal.me or GXI 09163112211. Much appreciate and thank you in advance. Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™  ' s  connection to the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) serves as a defining pillar of his professional journey, most recently celebrated through the launch of the ACC Global Alumni Network. ​As a 2003 Starr Foundation Grantee, Roldan participated in a transformative ten-month fellowship in the United States. This opportunity allowed him to observe contemporary art movements, engage with an international community of artists and curators, and develop a new body of work that bridges local and global perspectives. ​Featured Work: Bridges Beyond Borders ​His featured work, Bridges Beyond Borders: ACC's Global Cultural Collaboration, has been ...
Post a Comment
Read more