Where Light Dwells
In Light Receptacle Café, Jonathan Olazo revisits Monet’s devotion to light through abstraction and mixed media, transforming illumination into both subject and metaphor.
Words Randolf Maala-Resueño
Photos courtesy of Alliance Française de Manille
November 12, 2025
There’s a certain quietude that settles over Jonathan Olazo’s Light Receptacle Café, now on view at the Alliance Française de Manille in Makati. The exhibition, curated by Jonathan’s wife, painting conservator and curator Lyn Yusi-Olazo, unfolds like a meditation on how every stroke flickers, fades, and transforms—a presence of both subject and metaphor.
“Fear of Beauty Scarecrow,” Rubbercut, 18 × 18 inches, 2025
Engaging with the legacy of Claude Monet, Olazo doesn’t imitate the impressionist master so much as enter into a conversation with him. Monet sought to capture the shifting moods of daylight on haystacks and waterlilies; Olazo, through acrylics and mixed media, explores how that same light might live within abstraction with color, texture, and time intersecting in the act of seeing.
The title itself, Light Receptacle Café, suggests both an homage and an invitation. “Light” alludes to Monet’s mastery, but “Receptacle Café” evokes a gathering place—a conceptual café where ideas, influences, and reflections meet. In this imagined space, Olazo positions himself as both painter and participant, translating illumination into colorful symphony.
There is a philosophical calm beneath the work’s dynamism. Olazo’s abstraction feels less about depicting light and more about receiving it—allowing it to filter through memory, material, and inheritance.
Jonathan Olazo
As the son of renowned abstract painter Romulo Olazo and art manager Patricia Olazo, Jonathan’s practice carries the weight of legacy, yet it remains deeply his own: searching, experimental, unafraid of quiet revelation.
Jonathan Olazo, "Light Receptacle Café Panorama," Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 60 inches, 2025
In the context of Alliance Française de Manille’s long history of fostering cultural dialogue, Light Receptacle Café feels especially apt. It bridges the French roots of Impressionism and the Filipino language of materiality, forming a shared space where art becomes conversation.
To stand before these works is to linger in that exchange—to see how light, even refracted through decades and distance, still finds its way to the canvas. Olazo reminds us that illumination isn’t only what we see; it’s what remains after we’ve looked away.
Be illuminated and catch the exhibition until November 15. Check available pieces in this catalogue.
