Last Friday, we have discovered the wonder that is Friday Night Traffic. My family and I don’t really like going out, unless we absolutely need to, or if we are suffering from too much hermity behavior. Usually, these excursions don’t fall on Friday nights. So, when we went on our merry way to Makati for these shows, we had no idea what kind of traffic we were in for. But the shows and the late dinner made it worth the two-hour travel time.

Entering Warehouse 17 of the La Fuerza Compound along the Pasong Tamo Ext., which is where Finale’s base of operations is located, you are first greeted by a massive diamond suspended from the ceiling. This is the moment that you know that you are about to experience something really massive.

Not just in terms of scale, either. Nilo Ilarde’s show, Painting as Something and as the Opposite of Something, seems to be a commentary on art and how it is made. I don’t really want to put any meaning on something that might have other meanings that have nothing to do with my interpretation, or none at all. All I know is that there is a lot of thought put into his pieces. There’s a little bit of humor, wordplay, and I suppose it’s really hard to think of anything else when you’re faced with works as enormous as Ilarde’s pieces.

Mounted in Finale’s Tall Gallery are the following, among other pieces: a Hulked-up Beetle, an actual boxing ring and a wall of used up paint tubes.

I think that the question of what art is is still brought up by his show. At least, that’s what it made me ask, in the end.

In the Upstairs Gallery is Paulo Vinluan’s Heads Will Roll, featuring works that have adopted an amalgam of very distinct styles. I haven’t been to any of Vinluan’s other shows, so I can’t really assess this show in terms of his style (i.e. how it’s progressed, how it hasn’t, etc.) but I see that his style is very uniquely his, and the overall effect of his works, to me, is that: “Yes, these parts belong where they are.”

I can’t explain it quite so articulately, but I just felt like his pieces, together and individually, worked. No idea what the message of the pieces are, unfortunately… I liked them a lot, though.

This particular stretch of works, I liked. From the left, I went, in my head: “Oh, this is really nice,” and then I moved to the one beside it, “Oh, wow, I want this in my house,” and then I moved on to the next one and went, “Oh, this is really, really nice, too.” Turns out my brother went through the same thought process. (Pictures of the individual works after the jump.)

Inside the Video Room is Jonathan Ching’s Where in the World is Botero’s Leg. According to a write-up on the Finale website, this exhibit toys with the idea of the fallibility of human memory, and how perspective touches a memory’s meaning and truth. Ching is very liberal with the use of symbolism, using a lot of seemingly random imagery to convey his message.

I admire Ching’s work because his strokes are so bold, and so heavy. It adds a feeling of depth and tension to the work, and not just aesthetically. I really feel frakking hopeless, at times, when I look at his work. The palette is a little Stygian, the strokes, bold; the imagery, dark.

I’m pretty glad I went to this exhibit (even though I missed my nightly viewing of Magkaribal). Gave my mind a lot to chew on.