MANILA, Philippines - In the works of Francoise Reani Phapus C. Dizon-Torralba, modernity is depicted by the humdrum incidents with close friends and family in the familiar alleys and streets, coffee shops we frequently patronize, bay walk one hangs around, and even in the solitude of our private rooms.

Phapus is fascinated with the fleeting moment, and what is seemingly banal for some become suffused with power and luminosity.

To be fascinated is to experience delirium, a craving, or unquenchable thirst that modern artists painstakingly portray on their canvas. That is why Phapus is also resolute in repudiating the clarity of an ordinary photographic image with unusual colors and stylized figures, such as what she did in ?Pinata and the Wasabi Sky.?

Suddenly the sky here becomes green, shattering our common notion of a blue sky, giving the effect that the mother or the child could be anybody who fades or disappears in that looming verdure.

Strange, poetic

The strangeness and poetic quality of images in Phapus? work is undeniable. One is drawn to the possible stories of her subjects, such as the child who clings to her mother who is probably busy haggling with the fruit-stand vendor (?La Brea on the 3rd Street?). The child looks away, unmindful of her father, and is attracted to the couple in the nearby café. We are also attracted to this scene as the child does, and our gaze becomes peripheral.

We wonder if there?s anything more the child sees in here. Although we are tempted to follow the trail of her sight, we also begin to experience how we become emplaced in the painting itself, as though we the viewers merged with the view.

This fantastic rendering is also felt in most of her works that illustrate the ordinary people in their workaday world, such as in ?Agoos Calabasa? and ?Downtown Train.?

Phapus, daughter of painter Jeff Dizon, has always been mindful and articulate of her productions. In one interview, she says there is an overwhelming pressure to learn and do more.

?One cannot be confident with what one has produced, considering that influences and inspiration are coming from different directions simultaneously,? she says.

?The challenge is really putting this together without repeating or overdoing what has been done by artists like Warhol or Van Gogh? artists who have been very influential in my projects.?

Phapus regards art with an attitude that is as contingent as the work itself, a character indeed common to all modernists.

Phapus Dizon-Torralba?s ?Joei de Vivre? opens today, 6 p.m., at Choice Expression Gallery, 2/F, Doña Consolacion Bldg., 122 Jupiter St., Bel Air, Makati City. Call 8990718.