Luci The Gnat
Alex Aguilar and Nolet Soliven
2 – 28 February 2006
Mag:net ABS-CBN
Curated by Nilo Ilarde 

Alex Aguilar and Nolet Soliven reunite anew in an exhibit entitled Luci The Gnat which opens at Mag:net Gallery ABS at The Loop on February 2, 2006.  The exhibit title, a cryptic code which has sealed their friendship for years, was also the title of their last show sometime in the 90s. Not meaning anything in particular, it also strikes their dynamic as friends and as individual artists. Though both are quite anachronistically enamored with painting figures, they remain steadfast with it for the sheer pleasure of painting them, whence Soliven would still find in human anatomy a form with eternally expressive qualities.  

Having sojourned in Florence for a grant at the Accademia di Belle Arti has fully harnessed his impeccable skill in rendering the human form which borders on a classicist, sketchy finish to brisk impressionist color palettes which resembles much abstract paintings. For this exhibit, he has managed to merge two seemingly opposing tendencies – the abstract and the figurative. But it’s the figures which seem to be tamed by the wooly patches of color to constrict their emotive outpourings. Further, the figures had been effaced of facial features to dislodge them off of peculiarities of certain personages Soliven has based his figures upon.  

Aguilar, having worked in an advertising agency as an art director and now doing freelance graphic work for several publications, informs his paintings with a glut of images sourced from such field but colored more by his personal and private sentiments. As his canvases are piled up by a bewildering mix of the grotesque, the fanciful and his self-portraits, they seem to portray a warped glass globe kept in his memory, and thus which he and him alone can unlock and decipher. His latest series of paintings which resembles Tarot cards replicates this elusiveness to a certain meaning, more than insinuating a mystic interpretation of his works.  

As testament to their camaraderie, Aguilar and Soliven will be collaborating on a mural painted directly on the wall of the gallery.  

Soliven taught at the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines in Baguio City where he is currently based. While Aguilar plays with the band Maniac Kiss in between doing freelance graphic work and painting. Both studied painting at the College of Fine Arts in UP Diliman.  
Luci The Gnat’s opening cocktails will be at 6 PM. The show will run until February 28, 2006.

Mag:net Gallery is at The Loop, ELJ Center, ABS-CBN compound, Mother Ignacia Avenue corner Eugenio Lopez St. QC. For details please call Shey at 4100995 or email magnetplus@gmail.com.