INTRODUCTION
An artist-initiated endeavor as a response to the emerging new normal, Agos Studio is an arts collective that seeks to define, expand, and make more inclusive the limits of the art world by utilizing digital technology and its evolving platforms, fostering connections among the practitioners in the field, and providing new and alternative spaces where art can be shown, accessed, and discussed. Unencumbered by a physical location, Agos Studio subscribes to vision of
an arts community without walls, allowing for the free flow of ideas and the sustained involvement of those usually ignored by the mainstream.
​
Agos Studio is—by vision, nature, and function—a true open studio, as it reaches out to artists from the regions, art world practitioners working away or in contrast with the mainstream, and enthusiasts, supporters,
and collectors who are just beginning to establish a relationship with
contemporary art. Its network of established artists, existing galleries and art institutions, and long-time supporters and collectors of art provides a foundation on which the open studio confidently rests. Part community, part borderless art school, and part incubator of ideas, Agos Studio is the
result of the pandemic times with its sights trained on the exciting possibilities of the future of art.
WHO WE ARE
We are a Collective. We share a common vision nurtured by a creative and critical inquiry into the
evolving purpose, character, and aspiration of contemporary Philippine visual arts.
We are Collaborative. We cultivate a participative space where artists freely express their creative
process and ideas as we help in their development and execution through different media.
We are Connected. We fully utilize the available platforms of digital technology in order to sustain
dialogues with artists as well as reach out to audiences anywhere in the world.
We are a Community. We foster a sense of communality and shared ideal in our belief that art can
contribute to an introspective, progressive, and ultimately inclusive society.
Renato Habulan
Founder and Resident Mentor
Founded in 2020, Agos Studio was brought about by the shifting tides that the pandemic has brought. When galleries shut down, art shows were either cancelled or postponed, and artists were left to confront an uncertain future, Renato Habulan stepped into this period of indeterminacy by migrating his decades-long art mentorship program to the Internet. The respected Social Realist master is the animating force behind Agos Studio. Through video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, conversations about the roles and responsibilities of artists and other art world practitioners flourished, which extended to embrace a wider public.
