A TWO-MAN, ONE-WOMAN show featuring Romeo Lee, Elaine Navas and Jonathan Olazo (Manila Contemporary, 2314 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati) opens the year 2010 with a bang of bold strokes and crazy textures.

Navas? three panels capture the eye upon entering the gallery, with her signature impasto technique and an amalgamation of green. The four panels that make up ?Asborbed,? ?Found? and ?In Between? could easily be different angles of the same forest. What makes it unique is Navas? technique that seems to bring this forest to life, engaging the spectator in the familiarity of the moment: the trees and leaves all tangled up, a bit of sunlight cutting through the chaos.

In ?Wishingbone,? Navas? still life isn?t so much about the engagement with what?s familiar, but a rendering of the familiar into strangeness. The wishing bone, which connotes hope, is shown as a headless fish skeleton hanging upside down, a query into the idea of a wishingbone and what it is: a surrender, an end in itself, a moment up in the air.

It?s this same suspension apparent in Navas? two other works, ?Solo? and ?Pink Mutations,? as both work with crumpled unidentifiable forms that seem to be moving on the canvas. The latter merges together the forms using shades of pink; the former works with contrasting colors, creating a dynamism that?s difficult to miss.

In these works, it?s Navas? heavy impasto strokes that create the feeling of movement and vibrancy, even when she uses dark hues. This happens in direct contrast to the bright pastel colors and abstraction of Olazo?s works.

The works come to bear on the spectator precisely because it?s obviously not just an amalgamation of strokes or color, not simply about abstraction per se. Instead Olazo works with a combination of concrete familiar images and redefines these through lines and strokes that render them unidentifiable.

Particularly interesting are the paintings that greet you at the gallery doors, ?Fictions of the Cross? and ?Humbre the Gunslinger,? along with ?Jackson Olazo? across the room. These paintings reveal broad strokes that appear layer upon layer against, within and beyond the concrete image itself. It doesn?t take long to see with clarity the images Olazo works with, though it is abstraction as well, where eyes and mouths might be coincidental (?Fiction of the Cross,? ?Causality of Forking Paths?), the clear thin lines (?Humbre the Gunslinger? and ?Jackson Olazo?) a matter not of form but of circumstance.

It?s Lee?s works that end up stealing the show?or this spectator?s attention. Lee?s in-your-face aesthetic borders on the grossly identifiable or, well, just gross. It is Lee?s tongue-in-cheek manner of creating art, of rendering the world in all its contradictions, engaging the audience on the level of both familiarity and possible offense: More than presuming that we?ll get his humor, Lee presumes we can handle it.

Because there are jokes that are on you, or are there to provoke you?a private part here, a strange body position there (?Nobody Knew,? ?Oops I did It Again,? ?Do?Me?), a plethora of ugly faces (?Great Balls of Fires,? ?Auntittle,? ?Owlee,? ?Leengua?).

It is in his bigger works that there?s less of the gross and more of the wit and humor and candor that Lee shines in. There are still the contorted bodies (?Mommy Where?s My Food,? ?Sorry na Jabal?), but more than these are Lee?s works that had me laughing out loud.

There?s ?Krus Country? with five babies carrying and climbing two crosses, where the playground is a cross to bear as it is childhood fun. There?s a two-faced fish, one on the head, another on the tail showing distress and confusion about its existence. The title of the work is classic Lee: ?Isda?t You??

A Lee collection wouldn?t be complete without a jab at religion, and here he doesn?t disappoint. The self-portrait ?Releegious? plays with the image of St. John the Baptist and the lamb, with Lee?s face rendered atop the robed adolescent body.

Nearest to this painting is one that works with St. Francis? classic image surrounded by birds. Lee?s version keeps the birds, but has a central image that looks more like a Spanish priest. The laugh-out-loud title is ?I Ang Daming Birds!?