This Way to Camp

CEBU, Philippines — In the ever-constant politicking between life’s supposed ideals and prevailing realities, there’s an innocence we all look for in the stars; to be taken back to younger days when truth wasn’t dressed up by the calculated compromise of lies.

This take on the signs of the times – this view on what life has become for many – serves as the harmonizing binder of the exhibit “Camping Trip,” Qube Gallery’s featured show for the month of May.

Curated by JT Gonzales and mainlined by the works of emerging talents Reen Barrera, Terence "TRNZ" Eduarte and Jeffrey "Mister S" Santos, the show’s curatorial scope plays with the multi-veiled affiliations and associations of camping – highlighting camping and outdoor excursions as a recall to the days when the sight of golden sunset over beaches and mountains meant journeys to faraway places and the promise of adventure.

Top-billed by pop-art works that reframe the surrealist themes, the show structures its nostalgic stance with neo-expressionist compositions that spay divisions between thematic motifs – in a way enjoining viewers to redefine what summer means to them, to think of summer as a state of being and not as a season that comes and goes.

Both ethereal and illustrative in tone, the show sets itself apart from others as a lucid interval from life’s day by day collisions – as a metaphoric camping ground where the only rent to pay is to look to the stars and just be.

In more ways than one, “Camping Trip” affirms the wisdom in the saying “the best things in life are free,” alluding that it’s actually the trivial things in life that exacts unwarranted cost.