Description:

Beautiful is part of RM de Leon’s 2025 exhibition From the Pages – Spread Your Risks, which reflects on how personal taste—whether considered good or bad—shapes the way people appreciate and collect art. The piece began with a magazine page that was painted over, then enlarged and repainted again on bamboo rug paper with acrylic, merging mass-produced imagery with painterly intervention.

Through this process, De Leon blurs the boundaries between reproduction and originality, everyday media and fine art. Beautiful invites viewers to reflect on what they consider beautiful, how taste is formed, and how cultural systems influence these judgments. Instead of defining beauty outright, the work encourages dialogue, leaving space for interpretation and self-reflection.

About the Artist:

RM De Leon is a well-known Filipino artist whose practice spans from abstract forms to graphic, design-like compositions, reflecting both versatility and a playful approach to artmaking. His 2025 piece Beautiful, part of the show From the Pages – Spread Your Risks, explores how personal taste shapes the way people view and acquire art. Starting from a magazine page, De Leon painted over the image, enlarged it, and repainted it again, transforming something ordinary into a layered reflection on beauty and value. The work invites viewers to question how they define beauty, whether through cultural influence, personal preference, or desire, while underscoring that meaning in art is never fixed but always open to interpretation.

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