When We Dead Wake

Poignant stories can be told in a whirl of complex imagery that can leave us stunned and speechless. Then again, they can be told in a simple way that can nonetheless leave a nameless feeling in the gut---a disturbing little twinge---which can lodge itself in our consciousness like an old, familiar memory we haven't quite forgotten.

Allan Jay Balisi's storytelling has the quality of the latter type. His stories have no characters. There is no setting, and there is no plot. All that you would see is a simple box house in the middle of an ambiguous field in vivid colors but it's enough to make you wonder: what is happening inside those windows? How many tears have fallen on what could be an earthen floor? How many smiles have lit the walls up? What words could have been and will be said?

The answer is different for each and every one of us. Each painting allows us to tell our own stories from half-forgotten, tattered memories in old places that we consider dead. In fact. the artist himself revisits Isabela, his hometown, and shares with us his sense of pathos and nostalgia through oil on canvas. He is telling us that memories cannot really truly die---they can only sleep on the surface of our consciousness waiting for the right trigger to awake.

"When We Dead Wake" opens on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 1/Of Gallery, 2nd Level, The Shops, Serendra, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, Metro Manila. For more information please call 901-3152

"In Limbo" by Allan Jay Balisi (36"x48" oil on canvas, 2008).