Mariano Ching creates imagined worlds derived from katakana characters in the cluster shapes of some nebulous humans or animals perhaps, and here depicted in centrifugal array. Nature or figurative or a composite, the work evokes a kind of melancholy like fleeting clouds. Chinese-Filipino artist, illustrator and photographer Mariano Ching and his wife Yasmin Sison had a joint show at Valentine Willie Fine Art, Singapore. He was one of the winners of the 2006 CCP 13 Artists Award, the Alcala Illustrators Prize in 1998 and 2001. Ching studied Printmaking under the Monbusho Scholarship at the Kyoto City University of Fine Arts, Japan from 2002-2004 and graduated with a BFA in Painting from the University of the Philippines in 1998, after switching from Engineering in the fourth year. Ching was a member of the artist-run space, Surrounded by Water (1999-2002), founded by Wire Tuazon. He has taken part in the Aichi Triennial in Japan in 2010, and his works are in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum.