SHE WAS OBVIOUSLY OVERwhelmed silly by the fact that she was chosen as one of the 10 most exciting young artists.

Dina Gadia is the youngest at 23, and just might have more going for her other than her age. She has a clear sense of what it is that interests her, where her art must lie, and what it is she can do without?or must necessarily rebel against.

To Dina, there must be enjoyment in creation, and the need to come up with something new. This, even when her preferred medium has been collage, and even when what that requires is a combination of various art forms.

What fuels Dina?s artistic production is popular culture?toys, movies, icons, posters?and what it becomes is not so much a tribute to her childhood as what remains as a central truth: a reconfiguration of the images of our every day.

Old romantic Hollywood faces are violently reinvented (the smoke from an explosion that comes from nowhere; the waves that envelope most of a frame). The floral and pink are made strange by the anger it is interwoven with. The vintage image of little girls skipping and at play is reconfigured into faceless forms with one filled with flowers, the other with geometric shapes.

Yet there is enjoyment for every viewer of her work who can go beyond its seeming dismemberment of what is familiar. It is the pervasiveness of popular culture that has informed the ruins of our everyday lives. In Dina?s art, we are forced to contend with its disfigurement and its falsities.

Dina Gadia?s ?Ultra Plastic Style? is running at Galerie Hans Brumann (L/3, Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati) until Oct. 30. Call 7282175 or e-mail dididee@hiraya.com. Visit ghb. hiraya.com.