NOT your typical art exhibit, as one art connoisseur admits.

        Local artists Alain Llaguno, an abstractionist graduate of the UST College of Fine Arts from Daraga, Albay, and Pancho D. Alvarez, a 19-year old Political Science student from the Ateneo de Manila University who hails from Naga City, last December 29, 2007 opened their two-man exhibition at Westpark along vibrant Magsaysay Avenue in Naga City. It soon became a favorite hot corner among the city’s promenades and leisure park habitués.

        The show runs until January 6, 2008 with 18 artworks of mixed media and two pieces of ink on paper, where reality melts at the edges and the mundane is disassembled and transformed.

Caption: TWO ARTISTS. Pancho Alvarez (left) and Alain Llaguno braze the trail of abstractionism for local habitues.

        Billed “SuperNova”, the art exhibition is a creative explosion. Llaguno’s introspections about the self – seat of both emotions and perspective – seem to ask the question: Before we see the world, what do we see inside of ourselves?

        Only upon finding the answer can we venture into the outside, into the realm of human interaction and conflict.

        The young Alvarez, a campus paper cartoonist while at the Ateneo de Naga High School, through his coming-to-adulthood paintings turns societal issues into bizarre dreamscapes, letting distortion reveal reality.

Caption: MORAL SUPPORT. Pancho (4th from left) poses with his father, Jovi Alvarez (5th from left) and uncles, Bobby Ursua (with son Hubert, 1st and 2nd from left respectively) Joe Perez, Honey Boy Alvarez, August Medina, and Dr. Ronnie Ursua. At extreme right is Alain Llaguno.

        Through the skilled strokes of the two young artists, the lines holding the world are blurred and redrawn. Where does art end and real life begin, somebody would ask.

        Alain and Pancho concede that their show is not your usual art exhibit. And the exhibition does not intend to leave the universe unchanged. But it does hope that the observer become enactor of change.

        Pancho is the eldest of the three sons and a daughter of proud parents Jovi and Liza Alvarez (nee Deocareza). The proud father is the manager of Banco de Oro Naga Branch.