Group Show
HAYOP?..!!!??

Bembol dela Cruz
Ranelle Dial
Carlo Gernale
Eufemio Rasco IV
Christopher Zamora

Opening: 6:30PM, 15 November 2005, Tuesday
Group Exhibition runs until 29 November 2005


Opening at the Mag:net Gallery Paseo on 15 November, is a motley display of interpretations of the show’s title, “Hayop?..!!!?? by Bembol delaCruz, Ranelle Dial, Carlo Gernale, Eufemio Rasco IV and Christopher Zamora via oil paintings that are quite stupefying in their very rendition and
which deftly marks the play of such Tagalog term on appearances in all its aspects as to refer to hyperbolistic comparisons between being human and animal, literally and symbolically.  Though in street parlance, this same term connotes “coolness” and exceeding expectations of one’s capabilities and skills. It is not surprising also that most of these artists are also involved in street graffiti – an activity which thrives and revels on the andrenalin rush of not being caught while at it and scaling city walls and surfaces where one’s mark or signature would be superimposed to the consternation of the civic police.

The “hayop” signification is most apparent in Gernale’s paintings of meat and musclemen as it utilized the idioms of comics and 50s zine graphics in mockingly depicting physical prowess as the be-all and end-all of (hu)manliness. In the other painting though, he bluntly states that meat is meat and speech is merely  mindless buzz through one’s ears.

Zamora’s and Dial’s works hone in on the subject of figures as steadfast clichés to contend with in the over abundance of images. This is straightforwardly and classically depicted in Zamora’s where seeming female coyness is assumed by the cross-legged pose of the model, though her hand suggestively gesticulates to that part she’s most conscious of hiding from view. In Dial’s, these model poses are rather wryly remonstrated into play-acts of violation via Barbie dolls carelessly strewn among the grassy pavements, doll parts scattered, doll hair disheveled, as to hint at possible monstrosities that can be enacted on the human anatomy itself.

Dela Cruz’s tromp l’oleil of carpentry materials mythologize skill, cemented as it were on a eulogistic lapidary of gray cement ground.  This skill that typifies and singles the artist from that of a builder as they both use the materials depicted – hammer, saw, pencils, gun tacker, brush, L-bar, measuring tape - differing only in the ends they achieve to meet.

By such images, “hayop” or beastliness is in a manner of speaking the way you’d mean what human is.

Hayop?..!!!??’s  opening cocktails will be at 6:30 PM. The show will run
until November 29, 2005.

Mag:net Gallery Paseo is at the Ground Floor of  Paseo Center, Paseo de
Roxas, corner Sedeño St., Makati City.  Or call 817-7895 email
magnetcafekatips@com.ph