“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”  In Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass all sense of normal flies out of the window as Alice goes through the surreal and whimsical world of Wonderland.  The works of Francis Alingcayon and Hilario Barrozo both take us to the tripy side of visual storytelling, each work is a looking glass with which to find thread of our current realities retold curioser and curioser. 

​

Francis Alingcayon, a self-taught artist from Baguio who apprenticed under Art Lozano, focuses on what he sees as the subconscious of society – the basic drives and impulses which fuel our motives and our actions in relation to the world we live in.  An environmentalist at heart, he uses art to provide perspective, and with the hopes of helping society evolve into something better.

​

Hilario Barrozo, who is currently based in Manaoag, juxtaposes imagery from the local comics of his childhood with popular contemporary iconography, to bring humor to the stark realities which ail our society.  Using dark humor, his works speak of battles between right and wrong, spiked with overt irony, rendering them light, but piercing nonetheless.  

​

Both Alingcayon and Barrozo use whimsy and fantasy to point to dystopic realities that we willfully ignore or turn away from.  With humor and fantasy, they raise the alarm but without hysteria. (Ricky Francisco)