EXHIBITED WORKS
Finale Art File, LaO Center, Makati City
Clandestine Operations
Alvin Villaruel
May 30 to June 18, 2008
On view at the Finale Art File is Alvin Villaruel’s “Clandestine Operations.” At first sight, the paintings offer us glimpses of scientific inquiry, as men, women and children—figures of curiosity—stand in rapt attention to the project at hand. With their backs turned on the viewer, they congregate as if to witness the apparition of a major miracle. A slight unease overshadows the paintings: the balloons seem to be haunted by doom or failure as the overcast sky threatens in the background. Evocative and unnerving in its representation of slices of time past and the relationship of man to nature, the works hover like a weather balloon on the mind, registering the briefest tremor or wonder.
