“Through the Looking Glass” is a solo exhibition of Filipino visual artist Katrina Cuenca. It will be on view until June 13 at ArtistSpace.

Organized by Pinto Art Museum, the exhibition highlights the artist’s commitment not in describing the world, but in creating an alternate magical realm to it.

“She achieves this in her works through color combinations that beguile the eye, the resplendent forms that provide access to quiet and contemplation and the simplicity of her painterly gestures that unlock the deepest corners of the imagination. She extends further her commitment to this transportive place in the exhibition,” according to the notes by Carlomar Arcangel Daoana.

“While referencing Lewis Carroll’s literary masterpiece, ‘Through the Looking Glass’ provides a subtler introduction to phantasmagoria in which the viewer, just like Alice, may frolic and take everything in: sculptural biomorphic forms appearing to waver and undulate, paintings responding to light in a multiplicity of ways, flashes of projection swimming onto the gallery walls and a scent in the air evoking a memory of a garden full of flowers as soft music plays in the background. By tapping all the senses of the viewer, Cuenca envisions a portal that is both as a respite and an escape through which anyone may enter.”

Cuenca (born 1984) is a self-taught artist who has been painting since the 1990s. Experimenting with figures, patterns and textures, she continuously rediscovers and evolves her art practice based on life experiences. The result is a melding of figuration and abstraction at its most spontaneous and celebratory.

ArtistSpace is at 2/F, Glass Wing, Ayala Museum, Highway Drive corner East Drive, Makati.