A SHAPE-SHIFTING COLLAB GELS ON CANVAS

Luis Lorenzana and Clarence Chun's 'CC x LL' opens at MONO8.

- By SCOTT GARCEAU

You might seek some hidden meaning in the title of a joint Luis Lorenzana and Clarence Chun exhibit, "CC x LL," which adds up to "300" in Roman numerals or factors out to "20,000." You'd be barking up the wrong tree. "CC x LL" is simply a pure collaboration between two Filipino artists who are still exploring expression in new and abstract forms. Cryptic numerals be damned.

The two artists are game and friendly, chatting with family and friends at MONO8 for the evening launch, as gallery director and show curator Gwen Bautista guides us through the work.

The thing is, both artists have skewed their styles recently, shedding most traces of representational work and moving towards the abstract; in the three collaborative pieces shown at "CC x LL," it's a winning combination.

"I decided these two artists should collaborate and work together, because they complement each other's work," says Bautista. "They both want to break away from what they know. What really ties them together is to reclaim themselves from what they've learned, to reclaim painting as their own."

They come from very different backgrounds - Lorenzana is self-trained, a public administration graduate who worked in the Senate for a time before turning his perusal of the faces there in the gallery into vivid portraits that mix Filipino elements, pop surrealism, political satire and an Old Masters' palette. This was a period where Luis was getting noticed for group shows in the US, featured in write-ups in