The Quattro Mondial Monument
It’s monumental in terms of its concept. It captures the idea of the University—an institution of learning that has survived 400 years and various [disasters that came to] the country and [is still looking] towards the future.
Respected artist-critic and author of several art books
Taken from "The Making and Unveiling of a Masterpiece" The Varsitarian Quadricentennial Supplement, 2011
BluPrint - Global Pinoy Special Issue
Australian artist and designer working in contemporary glass. He is also an author, lecturer, workshop leader and consultant.
Taken from "Starting Point", Global Pinoy - BluPrint Special Issue, 2010
Orlina's contribution to society, both to its spirit and the economy, is witnessed by the major commissions he has received. The first, ARCANUM XIX, Paradise Gained, greeted me in the foyer of the Silahis Hotel on the first day of my visit to the Philippines in 1976. In the 1970s, few large-scale contemporary glass works existed anywhere in the world. This work gave the lie to the popular notion that the contemporary glass was a creature of Europe and North America (the work is now on loan to the National Museum).
Dr. Gerry King
Dale Chihuly of USA, Bertil Vallen of Sweden and Ramon Orlina of the Philippines
It is easy to think of lyrical poetry when viewing Orlina's work. But it is not a weak, sentimental lyricism that is imparted. Orlina knows that this would weaken the impact of his art. It is vitality he seeks through his forms, enhanced by the most subtle hues, a sense of what freedom of spirit is about, and the drama of interaction with art itself. In a great deal of Orlina's work there is a familiarity about them, and this is achieved through his understanding not only of his subject matter, but also his keen awareness f the human spirit. His sculptures give us a sense of soaring freedom and human intimacy, both vital to the heart of humankind. Through this Orlina has reached for, and achieved, a universal message in his art. In the end, of course, Orlina's sculpture is about hope and human joy.
Ian Findlay-Brown
Editor of World Sculpture News and Asian Art News
Taken from "Reflections" exhibition catalog, 2000
It is easy to think of lyrical poetry when viewing Orlina's work. But it is not a weak, sentimental lyricism that is imparted. Orlina knows that this would weaken the impact of his art. It is vitality he seeks through his forms, enhanced by the most subtle hues, a sense of what freedom of spirit is about, and the drama of interaction with art itself. In a great deal of Orlina's work there is a familiarity about them, and this is achieved through his understanding not only of his subject matter, but also his keen awareness f the human spirit. His sculptures give us a sense of soaring freedom and human intimacy, both vital to the heart of humankind. Through this Orlina has reached for, and achieved, a universal message in his art. In the end, of course, Orlina's sculpture is about hope and human joy.
Dr. Gerry King
Artist and Designer specialising in contemporary glass
who also undertakes consultancy positions in the arts and arts education.
Taken from "Beyond Hollywood - Glass in the Philippines", Craft Arts International, 2000
Ramon Orlina definitely brought something new to the West Coast with this exhibition. With most U.S. glass artists preferring blowing or casting, Orlina's approach offers valid alternatives if not original forms.
Matthew Kangas
Art Critic based in Seattle,Washington
Taken from GLASS: The Urban Glass Art, Quarterly Magazine Summer 1997 issue
Orlina has become today a real expert in glass technology and he has certainly perfected his craft to a very refined level of technical accomplishment. His works have received international recognition and acclaim. His abstract forms, so slick and sensuous in their finishings and their essentially organic, vitalistic characteristics, are quite stunning to behold. They reflect a conscious celebration of mass surface planes but the interplay between volume and void is given another usual dimension, namely a dazzling transparency and translucence, because of the luminous medium. In Orlina's work, actual physical light becomes a major element in the aesthetic activation of the form.
Redza Piyadasa
Taken from Orlina's Dazzling Sculptures
Business Times, 22 April 1995
Photo by The Edge Galerie
Orlina now truly sculpts with light, in particular light "trapped within" the glass block (an illusion, of course, since the material isn't hollow but solid). He deliberately attempts to give direction to the effects of refracted light (or light "trapped within" glass) and integrate these with the overall design. He also tries to relate the flow of lines and shapes and masses, or facets, on one side of the sculpture with that on the other side(s) as seen through the glass, to establish greater artistic balance, proportion and unity in a composition meant to be perceived in the round. In regulating the passage of light through the glass, Orlina frosts certain sides, or facets, of his sculpture. Combining the frosted areas with crystalline ones is a means of modulating, balancing and maintaining a desirable sense of continuity in the various movements of linear, planar and tonal element.
Eric Torres
Taken from Sunday Globe Magazine Through a Glass,
Brightly The Orlina Phenomenon 29 May 1988
Photo by Rick Olivares
Ramon Orlina shapes forms in tinted glass, clear or frosted, and has mastered the art of fully bringing out the aesthetic qualities of his medium, its transparency or translucency, the mysterious depths of its hues, the particular interest of shaped, convoluted, or involuted form in a transparent medium, whether he works in big solid blocks or in small pieces of a more compact tactile and visual appeal.
Alice G. Guillermo
Taken from "Images of Change" 1988, pg. 35
Photo by UP Alumni
An artistic idea exists in its purest abstraction - no natural outside referent - and undergoes transformation, revision and sometimes an entirely new trajectory in the process of creation. The block of glass and the idea in progress enter into a give and take process given the characteristics of the medium. Serendipities like a bubble or two trapped within which a technician may consider an imperfection, is exploited to the hilt, highlighted and made an integral part of the composition. This is where the artist is separated from the technician. Orlina, the consummate glass sculptor that he has now become is that kind of an artist. He knows how to exploit the virtue of 'imperfection'
Paul B. Zafaralla
Taken from Marie Claire Chiaroscuro,
Chiaroscuro 2 June 1988
Photo by GUMIL Metro
"Whose sculptures are out of this world".
Leonidas V. Banesa
In a personal dedication to artist in his book OKIR, 1982
Orlina's bid for attention as a sculptor of original talent lies in the series of crystal-clear works in the round whose individual components are like cut, many-faceted precious stones. Incredibly heavy and practically unbreakable, the works look like emerald forms in a fantasyland of crystal and ice. The sheer sparkling qualities of the works project an aura that is more mineral than organic, glass being what it is. Chasing Rainbows, on the other hand, in which the artist strove for opaque rather than clear effects, exudes the human exhalation, the breath of life, something animal or alive in any case.
Leonidas V. Banesa
Daily Express 8 May 1980