The Drawing Room in Makati: A Contemporary Philippine Art Haven

The Drawing Room in Makati is a gallery that presents contemporary art from the Philippines through exhibitions that span different artistic formats and practices.

The gallery began as a specialist venue focused on works on paper before expanding into a broader contemporary art program. Its exhibitions reflect the varied approaches, ideas, and realities found within contemporary Philippine art.

IMAGE from The Drawing Room’s Facebook page 

The gallery is presenting three solo exhibitions running from August 29 to September 26, 2026:gapnod_protocol by KoloWn, Line Drawings by Ian Carlo Jaucian, and borrowed heat by Matina Partosa.

gapnod_protocol is KoloWn’s third solo exhibition with The Drawing Room, following In Real Life in 2021 and 404 in 2022. The artist also recently presented GhostControl and Screen Paintings at ALT Philippines 2026.

IMAGE from The Drawing Room’s Facebook page 

The title comes from the Cebuano word “gapnod”, meaning flotsam. The exhibition brings together five projects connected by the practice of material scavenging across both physical and digital spaces.

The works consider how found materials, fragments, and information can be gathered, transferred, and reconfigured across different environments, creating connections between physical objects and digital processes.

IMAGE from The Drawing Room’s Facebook page 

Line Drawings is Ian Carlo Jaucian’s first solo exhibition at The Drawing Room.The exhibition examines the line through a range of visual and conceptual interpretations. The line appears as a horizon, a moving dot, a path of light, a trace of sound, a vector, and a copy of a copy.

Rather than treating the line as a fixed element, the exhibition presents it as something that can shift through movement, distance, repetition, and perception.

IMAGE from The Drawing Room’s Facebook page 

Moreover, borrowed heat by Matina Partosa brings together the geological and the fleeting, the living and the dead, and the remembered and observed within the same visual field.

Her paintings look at how things retain traces of what they once were while gradually becoming something else. The exhibition places different scales of time close together, from brief everyday moments to geological durations that span millions of years.

Water serves as one of the exhibition’s central points of reference. Partosa draws from memories of learning to swim at a young age, recalling the sensations of entering water, floating, and adjusting to the pressure of another element.

IMAGE from The Drawing Room’s Facebook page 

The Drawing Room works closely with its artists through long-term gallery relationships, supporting interdisciplinary practices through exhibitions, exposure, and participation in art events.

Aside from its monthly exhibitions in Manila, the gallery also presents artists through off-site shows in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Jakarta, New York, and Paris, and regularly joins local and international art fairs.

IMAGE from The Drawing Room’s Facebook page 

Through these three exhibitions, The Drawing Room presents different approaches to material, movement, memory, time, and transformation, reflecting the range of practices within contemporary Philippine art.