THE INVITE TO ?VIAGGIO IN Italia,? the two-artist exhibition of Italian master abstractionist Alberto Gallingani and debuting Filipina painter Regina De Leon-Pasqualetti, juxtaposes a rather curious pair of tragic figures: a resplendent Michael Jackson muted by the sensorial boundaries of the visual on the one hand, and, on the other, a scribbled portrait of a man, rendered in stoic countenance, holding some random withered plant.

The uneasy pairings of such strange bedfellows and the dialogical potential of discordant styles and philosophies that make the Gallingani-De Leon project (on view at the LRI Art Plaza in Bel-Air, Makati until Nov. 28. Call Gallery Big at 8954516; e-mail nathrondina@gmail.com) a successful, albeit curious, experiment.

Not coincidentally their exhibit borrows its title from the 1953 film classic, ?A Voyage to Italy,? directed by Roberto Rossellini. The movie starred Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders as a married couple whose already thorny relationship grows more problematic in a foreign land.

The movie was harshly criticized by Hollywood critics for its plodding pace but was highly acclaimed by the French New Wave filmmakers Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut for its masterful use of the critical tension spawned by the interactions between people and places.

Gallingani is a highly esteemed figure in contemporary Italian art and is recognized as a prime mover in the Florentine abstract movement. He began his artistic career more than four decades ago when the Neo-realist aesthetic in both cinema and the visual arts was signaling Italy?s reemergence as a major global cultural force in the post World War II era. He has since held many international exhibitions, working on multiple media platforms including painting, performance art, mixed media and digital art, photography and experimental video.

For his Manila exhibit, Gallingani introduces his ?AGN? series of works in mixed media. This series depicts frenzied scribblings and splashes of paint strewn over photographs of random, daily occurrences like people caught in traffic jams or aboard public transport. On the surface, Gallingani?s hand-drawn characters, at once furious, acerbic and funny, appear like doodled caricatures on some vandalized public property.

Gallingani?s compositions, however, are profound pictorial mind bombs, symbolic rotten tomatoes that serve as ideological projectiles meant to pierce through synthetic notions of absolute truths institutionalized in the normal routines of everyday.

In Gallingani?s bricolage of images, it is the caricatured saboteur who emerges in the foreground, as though it had just clawed its way to the surface from the depths of a pre-fabricated universe, wide-eyed and triumphant.

De Leon, who studied painting in Florence under Gallingani?s mentorship, in contrast, debuts in this exhibit with reserved confidence.

?The relationship between a teacher and a student,? Gallingani says, ?is a balance between give and take. I proferred my knowledge of the craft, I shared the history of art as I knew how to tell it, putting to light all its contradictions and marvels, and I was rewarded with a serene approach to the canvass, the detachment of one who has been touched by art and uses it as a means to convey serenity and happiness.?

As may be gleaned from her Michael Jackson homage pieces, De Leon?s aesthetic is shaped by an earnest and deeply personal sensibility that is yet unencumbered by what Gallingani calls the hallmarks of ?existential pessimism.?

Her portraits of distinguished donnones, full-figured women in courtly garb speak of quiet grace and conviction, drawn in a style marked by a skillful temperance uncharacteristic of someone new to the realm of professional art. It is this measured restraint that renders De Leon?s work significant, especially set against Gallingani?s more mature and abrasive voice.

For all their differences, however, both artists share a keen understanding of people and their emplacements in the universe whether as subversive agents as in the case of Gallingani?s characters or as embodied subjects in De Leon?s.

In the end, the artists? shared viaggio is not so much about travelling the distance to idyllic foreign locales, but are actually about the landscapes of people that inhabit our shared existence.