Opening at Mag:net Katipunan on May 31 is Structure in Nature is a Strategy for Drawing, Katrina Bello's first exhibit in Manila. Featured herein are oil paintings and graphite and charcoal drawings on paper and mylar film - all illustrating her concepts of space and the very conception of it through the structures and patterns that are inherent in nature and in the constructed environment. The exhibit title itself is a take-off from Peter Pearce's book Structure in Nature is a Strategy for Design where these formal explorations are inspired by. Weaving and bisecting lines mimic spider webs, shafts of tall grass, vines, traffic grids, electrical power lines or building infrastructures, suspension bridges. The somber gray tones place these forms in a post-industrial terrain vague, veiled in either smog or mist or both. However, there is no hidden mystery, only seemingly factual elucidations of these mitosis growths that ping-pong between micro and macro cosmic realities. Yet by being drawn on paper or canvas, the point of space being a mere construct is further emphasized - the space of subjectivity flowing into a space of objectivity and flowing back once again, reflecting and deflecting both these propositions against each other, with space being tangential with time, as concurrent with its conception of it following the experience of space itself. Drawn space may make for this probability but is still conditioned to the limits of its making (paper, drawing medium, duration of its making). The process of drawing by no means makes space as fixed as a melting ice crystal, or an isotope on the verge of combustion or of a civilization on the verge of its own ruin.

Katrina Bello studied Industrial Design at the UP College of Fine Arts but finished majority of her studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey as a Painting major. She currently traverses between Philippines and the US for exhibits and works as a freelance photography researcher.

Structure in Nature is a Strategy for Drawing will be on view from May 31 to June 19 2008.

Mag:net is at 335 Agcor Building, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. The show opens at 6 pm on Saturday May 31 . For details or inquiries, contact the gallery at 929-3191 or email magnetgalleries@gmail.com or visit www.magnetgalleries.com