UPDATED! THE MUST-SEE ] Spot the bottle at Mariano Ching's Dead Ends

"Hinimay mo ba?" photographer Raena Abella asks me after we got two of the last remaining bottles of Pale Pilsen."Hanapin mo 'yung turntable." We are at the opening night of Mariano Ching's Dead Ends and False Starts show at the SLab section of Silverlens in Pasong Tamo Extension, looking at a huge painting, a post-apocalyptic vignette, and zeroing in on the long underground tunnel where rats share cramped living space with the remains of our 21st century waste: wine bottles, TV sets, old tires, video games and, there it is!--the turntable.

It's all easily very cute, Mariano's obsessed little drawings, but not cute in the way that so many things in the art shows in past months were intentionally cute like this and this or this. I have nothing against cute, ok? I crave it.). It's a playful, dreamy, even happy, depiction of doom (decaying people spewing rainbows), of small objects and vast spaces, of emptiness and nothingness.

And this blabber is a display of my emptiness and nothingness. Sorry I'm really not good at this art talk.

But the works are impressive, really. The boys I brought, Neil, Noel and his son, artists all, were a little frugal with their impressions---either that or they were underwhelmed. My friend, who saw the pieces the day before was gushing over it. He bought one of the works. And Raena, the day after, told me she can't stop thinking of the works.

One day, hon, one day we'll be able to afford it. Hopefully before the real apocalypse comes.