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Ricco Renzo Galleries puts on view a three-person exhibit entitled “EKZENA” which opens on May 22, 2009. Revolving around the perception of “scenes,” the mind-set of Zen and the concepts of lyrical abstraction, the title has inference to a philosophy where art is presented in a style that combines maximum of technique and a minimum of planning and deliberation. However, the abstractions presented are not the haphazard approach for art’s sake, but of the manner by which the artwork impacts on the viewer.

Scenes are very much a part of everything that is art. A scene can be a subject or the content the artist will portray but it can also be the place and venue where an event takes place. To create and make a scene implies action and movement. This action of a scene is the very essence of the phenomenon of a happening. The occurrence of an art happening alludes to an improvised spontaneous art activity or exhibit where the eyes of an audience are treated to art that is free and unpredictable. Spontaneous abstract art can not be planned and predetermined. Pure and clean abstraction excites visual perception. Looking at an abstract painting oftentimes creates individualistic episodes depending on how the viewer views it. Abstraction is open to varied opinion and interpretations. It combines free will, intellect, intuition and instinct.

“EKZENA,” an abstract art exhibition by the triumvirate of artists namely JCrisanto Martinez, Sio Montera and Javy Villacin suggest all of the things and incidents mentioned above. Each artist presents a personal series of works that tackle chosen themes like time, space, the jouirney of life, death, wisdom, and the paradoxes of our human condition.

JCrisanto Martinez’s oeuvres reflect on “time” as a sinuous medium to be maneuvered similarly as paint. His washes of acrylics on burlap delve into the continuum of time. By layering images, Martinez incorporates undertones and meanings that summon a response by the viewer. At one end of the premise of his series’ working concept is to defy the notion of art as perceive merely by sight. Intuition – which is the state of knowing something instinctively, or the immediate knowledge of something – as a word and a process came as a challenge to the artist in developing this series.

Sio Montera’s mixed media explore on “free form.” These impasto art pieces bring him to the state of mind where the cerebral authority rules over “art;” an awakening of the artist’s subliminal self. As the outcomes are unpredictable, the artist is conscious all throughout in what he is doing, while freeing himself at the same time from representations that limit visual perception.

The large canvasses of Javy Villacin continue and deepen his foray into the dream world. The aggregate of works aptly about “shambala” which is a “higher level of consciousness and spirituality,” Villacin reinforces his fascination with this dream world that straddles many states of consciousness by focusing more on the emotional atmosphere and visual resonance. But the basic elements of a Villacin artwork are the usual pencil backgrounds that rejoice the reticence, the daring even, in some cases, the mayhem of drawing.

The three artists are highly individual players who have all made a niche in the arena of abstraction. Though a happening is a scene or an “ekzena” in the confines of a gallery it very much includes the creation of an overall feeling of a contained atmosphere in a walled environment. Abstractions can be a trip to an altered state and an environment in an alternate dimension. As products of potent minds, abstract art embraces all and everything the heart and mind can originally conceived and at the same time alienates impossibilities.

EKZENA will be on view at Ricco Renzo Galleries starting May 22, 2009 at 7pm with an opening cocktail. The exhibit runs until June 11, 2009. The Ricco Renzo Galleries is located at the LRI Design Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia St., Bel-Air II, Makati City, Philippines. For inquiry please call 898-2545 or 0927-386-1460, email or visit .

To believe in evolution, one has to be an evolutionist. He then is a person required to be evolutionary in thinking, open to changes and who isn’t stuck and asleep in a Procrustean bed. When working out art theories and picturing personal historiographies the artist will devise plans for an evolutionary exhibit of art works because this comes naturally in his maturation. Sio Montera, the art practitioner becomes a visionary as well but by not being messianic because he is not forsaking his roots and by acknowledging his beginnings, the show is very much autobiographical using the philosophy of experience in the context of his inner-self unfolding in material production in the form of art works. This opening out then is the true expression of the intellect and from his heart’s passion. Prodigious in the presentation of both fibrous/organic/indigenous materials suspended in time by an industrial method of encapsulation. These labor-intensive presentations represent such themes as spiritual awakening given concrete/tangible visual forms of the almost omnipresent and in the mandala, which are universal in the cultures of people displaced by geographic boundaries. Such evident commonality asserts the theory of our equal origins as human beings. It is inevitable that when one aspires to fathom his roots, naturally the best place and way to explore is to make an introspect into the self as we are created in our Creator’s image and likeness. The exhibition on the other hand is filled with ironies and contradictions, as evolution per se is incongruous with the Christian faith in creation. Thus in his art, Montera reconstructs and somehow reconciles the two opposing concepts. It’s a show that’s mythical and mystical in concept welding into a scientific approach in production process while the artist provides the artistry. Hence in a quaint road less traveled, Montera’s activities are clouded in mystique. In knowing the self, he ultimately looks beyond unto the less understood supernatural forces like those that give life. Evolution is the embracing of constant changes without it there can be no growth and progression. Development in art will depend on how an artist will push himself to attain his full human potential by using the resources around him to its full creative capacity. *END

Perseverance under the most rigorous of demands characterizes both the work and life of visual artist Dennis ‘Sio’ Montera. The Cebuano’s artistic environment is rife with the intense competition between local artists and the constant need to survive the provincial art world, whose patronage is still dominated by traditional genre and the phenomenon of ‘imported’ (that is, Manila-based, mall-displayed) art. As a painting practitioner, Montera’s work alludes to a highly untraditional (because modernist) approach to this conundrum: a desire to utilize the sensuality of textural surface that defies local notions of representational effect, and instead focuses on the tactility of ground, pigment, and vehicle of new media, such as his current use of acrylic-based paint texturizers, and asphalt roof sealants.
As a Fine Arts graduate and current member of the faculty at UP College Cebu, from which he was awarded an academic fellowship grant to take his MFA in UP Diliman, Montera’s aesthetic affiliations bear close scrutiny: heir to the rich art educational heritage of the late Cebuano master and UP Fine Arts alumnus Martino Abellana (the Amorsolo of the South), Montera’s formal upbringing was both diverse and liberal, emphasizing the totality of the artistic experience not only from the retinal-naturalistic viewpoint, but also the cognitive-affective-expressionistic one. Abstraction provided for him an unprecedented opportunity to grow as an artist, although one who is still deeply imbedded in local cultural contexts, from which he teases out his ideational praxes into a mediation between pure form and ideological formation.
Its current resolution comes as no surprise. Penitensya is both a conceptual journey across space, as well as a formational journey heading inward. Composed of twenty panels measuring a total of six by eighty feet, the work is visually divided into three progressions composed of two major motifs. A central inner motif of vertical gestural lines formed from repeated layers of asphalt is overlain by more diagonal and concentric strokes of Versatex texturizer, while the top and bottom outer motif is composed of more planar pulls and ripples produced by working on the Versatex with a rag while still wet. The progression is formed by the gradual inversion of the tonal range between central and outer motifs from predominantly white, to gray, and finally to black. The monochromatic scheme of the work is seen as a solution to the opposition of figure-ground relations, utilizing contemporary materials that are painstakingly built up into this gesamkunstwerk that points to both its meditative effect in the formal elements involved (monochrome and gestural lines), as well as its synthesis of the dual origins from Western Minimalism and Asian calligraphy.
Montera avers to the concept of Lenten penitence as the unifying element of the work. Its application can be seen in his interpretation of the process of artistic production as an “act of seeking atonement for one’s sins.” Its execution on such a scale and theme is a manifestation on the self-inflicting of pain, and the expression of remorse for “sins” both real and imagined. In a sense, Montera also reinscribes his artistic labor as penitential, in the sense that it was an inflicting of ritualistic self-punishment in the act of fulfilling his vision, a process that is both strenuous and repetitive, occupying the better part of ten months. The theme of physical self-punishment in the Filipino folk practice of penitensya can be read as a mnemonic device that cues us to the ideal of self-denial in the face of remorse. It is, of course, one that is layered within a dense codifying praxis that webs regret, suffering, and redemption within an overarching paralogic of power relations. Prominent art critic Patrick Flores, for one, teases out the notion of suffering as a grammatical sign that appends the state of the penitent as that of “defensible survival,” that is, the felt struggle that is waged within the colonial economy of human spirituality versus imperial morality. Penitence becomes here a form not only of subservience, but also that of potential defiance, in the sense that its ultimate reward, liberation, is achievable through struggle and hardship. It is a Christian dialectic deeply imbedded in the Filipino folk imaginary, manifested in such disparate cultural forms as Bernardo Carpio and the Ninoy Aquino mystique. Flores, crucially, refashions suffering into “sufferance,” the act of suffering or the patience/endurance of suffering, as a qualifier in the “emotional economy of struggle that engages the suffering agent or…the sufferant to exceed the power by which it is enabled” (2003, 23).
Penitensya, therefore, slides between the spaces of abject surrender and its redemptive liberation through the conscious act of subjecting oneself to the struggle of suffering. Its role as homologous to the artist’s social stakes (the artist/work is subjected to surveillance, strenuous labor, and finally institutional acceptance) is central to the understanding of the project’s undertaking as an epic piece, literally in the abstract. Finally, its multi-valenced usage of monochrome gestural painting points sideways towards the cultural conventions of symbolic ritual: the colors of ash, coal, and sand that signifies the ends of materiality also serves to focus on the formality of elements, pared down to the single voice of its producer. The transition from tonal remorse to expressive realization is done by looking across from the formerly within, conceptually closing the composition as it ends from mostly white to mostly black—and resolving the act of epic sufferance with the hope for heroic redemption. **END**

*Reuben Ramas Cañete is a true blooded Cebuano and is currently an Asssistant Professor at the Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines at Diliman. He is an art historian, art critic, curator, and artist by profession. He won the 1996 Leo Benesa Award for Art Criticism, and served as president of the Art Association of the Philippines from 2000 – 2001.

“Tuslob-Buwa” is the name adopted by a group of four contemporary artists in Cebu namely Evan Bejec, Sio Montera, Jojo Sagayno, and Ritchie Quijano isn’t at all related or having to do with the etymologies of profound words in art glossaries. “Tuslob-Buwa” is more known to the population of the masses because it is a communal dining experience where many share a single viand. Partakers of the “Tuslob-Buwa” meal can be likened to those who witnessed and experienced the multiplication of loaves. “Tuslob-Buwa”, a poor man’s meal is an exotic gastronomic experience made of meat with a staple of rice. Specifically, the protein here is made either of pig’s brain, liver, and fat eaten with the local “puso” (hanging rice). The cheap meal is popular in the fish markets of Pasil where everyone eats on a budget but most definitely getting a nutritious meal. To the four of us, “Tuslob-Buwa” is used as a metaphor to our beginnings as a dynamic group of young, brave, and stubborn souls out to make a stir. “Tuslob-Buwa” as a food simmers in a heated pan. With “Tuslob-Buwa Begins” the art show is a plan to create an alternative visual experience. It intends to break the monotony and homogeneity of the current art practice in Cebu. Paving a trail for new traditions, it also aims to destabilize the status quo by offering the public newer and contemporary forms of art. The more expressive art the group exposes isn’t always what it seems. There’s nothing you’ll see that’s exactly what one gets because of its minimal content and many allusions. As a group, the four artists having retained their artistic identities with each are pursuing a path of its own. Each was born as an artist and will die as an artist. In their working attitude, not one work escapes the process of conception thus each materialization is the product of commitment and dedication. Hence, they’re artist from womb to tomb. “Tuslob-Buwa Begins” is the closing salvo for the year 2005 and heralds the art world to a brand new age starting in 2006. “Tuslob-Buwa” continues in February 2007 with “LOVE THEORIES!

Many have believed that the realm of abstraction, particularly the non-objective and expressionist varieties, belong to the subconscious, pertaining to the state of mind which is not fully consciouss. More so when subconsciouss permeability is applied in art, producing vague images which characterize expressionist paintings, since the the subconscious sans the full mind control still influences gestural actions. However when Sio Montera pr3esents his solo exhibit, he gave us an anti-thesis of what governs the totality of a person's thoughts and feelings. Consciousness can also perceive what cannot be normally discerned by the eyes alone. The commonly accepted thought that the expressionist painter's habit is "when you paint, don't think, you feel!" is negated by what Sio Montera is trying to say. Because he presents the other side, which is painting abstraction with careful control. This effort is shown by the sort of materials he uses, like asphalt and texturizing materials, is hard to manage compared to the usual paint. Montera's show thrives on contradiction and irony. When consciousness is supposed to result in objectivity and concrete forms, his is the opposite. Very Freudian in nature, the slip could be revealing hidden feelings. The continuous movement of circular circles in the Freudian disguise that may be interpreted as the cycle of life itself and the need to mutiply. However, traces of the Jungian method can also be seen in these cycles. When the movement is repetitively don, it means a will for contnuity without end. Here,abstraction ceases to be an intutive impulse. His non-objective artworks are reined in by intellect over intuition and instinct. And there is process involved in the art making that may be unnecessary in an expressionist work expressing emotional experience. Hence, Montera's "Consciousness" somehow consolidates the intellectual process and emotinal expression. So messrs. Freud and Jung, meet Sio Montera.

THREE-MAN show, aptly titled Art of Three (A3), is a visual convergence that somehow calls for unity in the face of diversity.

Years ago, the trio of participating painters first crossed paths while finishing their masteral degrees in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Soon after completion, they moved on to practice and establish their art in their homecourts. Now they are crossing paths again in the arena of an art gallery.

A3 opened last Friday, Sept. 21, at the newly renovated, expanded, and improved Bluewater Gallery inside the plush compound of the Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort. This art exhibition (ongoing until the mid-part of October) seeks to solidify the individual artist’s commonalities and delineate differences. Having come from different regions of the country, the triad of Arthur dela Cruz, Sio Montera and Aman Santos III intends the show to be representative in nature and character.

Dela Cruz hails from Davao, hence we’ll be seeing vignettes and episodes of splendor from his hometown.

The Visayas is represented by Montera whose turf is Cebu, and bringing his art from Manila is Santos. Though they trained under the same professors in Diliman, they have many “differences” in their work and leanings. One is a representational practitioner, the other one an abstractionist, and the third, a painter of water-loving, androgynous figures.

Dela Cruz executes the usual Davao formula, making use of what the place is known and famous for. The paintings are pictorial, figurative and decorative in the grandeur of Davao’s flora and fauna, such as the regional symbols of orchids and eagles. And generally, dela Cruz’s works are not as wild as the wildlife on it.

It is Montera who tries to define the ultimate true and free expression of an artist by letting go of what the eyes normally see and comprehend by doing pure abstracts.

Santos’ art is the urban challenge of making way through nameless crowds where faces and identities become generic and somewhat featureless.

The show is like a microcosm of the nation’s entirety; composed of representations from three main geographic regions of the archipelago.

The three artists, who come from the country’s three major art centers of Cebu, Davao and Manila, assemble to provide us all a peek into their art’s directions, and a glimpse of art from their respective regions.

The Art of Three (A3) is a visual convergence that calls for unity in the face of diversity. Years ago of trio of participating painters first crossed paths while finishing their Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. Soon after completion of their studies they have move on to practice and establish their art in their respective home fronts. Now they are crossing paths again in the arena of an art gallery. This art exhibition seeks to solidify the individual’s commonalities and delineate differences. And it answers the qualifier of young art and contemporary. Having come from different regions of the country, the triad of Arthur dela Cruz, Sio Montera and Aman Santos III intends the show to be representative in nature and character.
Dela Cruz hails from Davao hence we’ll be seeing the vignettes and splendor of his hometown. The Visayas is represented by Montera whose turf is Cebu while bringing his art from Manila is Santos. Being trained by common professors in Graduate school we find their difference thru their work and leanings. Dela Cruz’s works are incorporations of things his place is known and famous for. Montera on the other hand, let’s go of what the eyes can normally see and comprehend by doing pure abstraction. Santos’ art is the urban challenge of making way through nameless crowds where faces and identities have become generic and seemingly featureless. The show is a small microcosm of the nation’s entirety composed of representations from the three main geographic regions of the archipelago. The artists who come from the three major art centers of Cebu, Davao, and Manila assembles to provide a peek of their art’s directions and a glimpse of art from their respective regions that proves an ongoing melting pot, a healthy condition that disdains homogeneity resulting to art that is forever vibrant.

IN A CLASS display of beauty and sophistication, this new premium art gallery in town selected one of the finer abstraction maestros in the city to be showcased for its inauguration.

Dennis “Sio” Montera, renowned for his large-scale abstract expressionist paintings, is the artist featured for the gallery’s launch. Dubbed The Contemporary, this 60-square meter space is located at the second level of the Design Center of Cebu building, AS Fortuna St., Mandaue City, Cebu.

According to chief curator, JV Castro, The Contemporary is “Cebu’s first premium fine
art gallery carrying art pieces from artists of distinction and repute.”

Castro is joined by Anne Lacson as managing director and Hara Vian See as public relations and communications director.

“[Montera’s] new masterpieces strongly reflect the profound shift in Visayan visual arts from the conservative realist style to the groundbreaking contemporary style,” explained Castro in a statement.

The exhibit entitled “DefiniSIOn” features 19 of the artist’s recent works delving in his trademark interpretation of abstract expressionism.

Also, in what Montera would deny as some leaning toward more scientifically progressive work, he claims that his knack for iron oxide and playing with rust recently, is simply an aesthetic thing.

“I like how the rust look gives an effect that the artwork is something conceived through time, plus it blends with my established style of lines, gestures and colors.”

The artist also mentions a turn for more mature tones in his works.

“I’ve been using a lot of earth tones recently; for me it speaks of maturity. These are also stable colors now, no need for eye candy.

“This exhibit is some sort of culmination of whatever I learned for the past two years; technique, material and composition,” explained Montera who has been selected to four major international art events in the same time frame, not counting other awards and distinctions.

“These (paintings) can compete globally,” humbly mentioned a satisfied Montera. “But I still want to become better. I still want to improve more.”

Such words can only come from a true artist who is continually evolving. Indeed, Montera is one whose sights are set for no less than the world itself. “This here is also an opening salvo of what is greater to come.”

The same words are fitting for The Contemporary art gallery as well. The industrial-inspired space has already highly-notable and esteemed visual artists lined up for exhibits during the entire year. The gallery, steered by Castro, Lacson and See, has placed easily itself as one of the premium venues for contemporary art here in Cebu; one that aims to feature art, from both established and emerging talents, that could easily go toe-to-toe with others on a global scale.

“DefiniSIOn” will run from Feb. 12 to March 2.

Cebu’s prolific artist outdoes himself again in the exhibition Foto+Abstac|SIO|n 3. Taking inspiration from thirty images found in different Bluewater Resorts in Maribago, Sumilon, and Panglao, Sio Montera uses the camera as a medium to capture the essence of an abstract image. His photographs are an ode to the elements of visual art.

In viewing the exhibition, Montera trains his viewers to look beyond the literal subject of the photograph. Instead, he wants them to dissect it into lines, shapes, colors, forms, and textures. Pointing to 90°, at first sight, is a rock commonly found in Cebu, but it is transformed into a rough, vaguely triangular surface in a negative space if it is seen the Montera way.

Another important highlight of the exhibition are his photographs printed on art canvas that seem to remind his viewers of the classic Sio done in acrylic and bitumen on canvas. Either a pure coincidence or, perhaps, a welcoming prophecy of success in the new medium, Rising Surface Tension is one of those pieces look like a signature Montera painting at a distance. However, a closer look reveals its pure photographic nature derived from layers of paint on a peeling wall. Other pieces in Foto+Abstac|SIO|n 3 are a perfect blend of photography and painting. Montera’s perfection of technique can be found in pieces like Crossing the Shadow Lines, Phallus, and A Cascade of Cantilevered Planes.

His experimenting on different techniques and approaches to art is a testament to the diversity of contemporary art in Cebu. The constant evolution of Montera’s art reflects a highly developed taste and well-informed knowledge on the art scene outside the confines of his hometown. After all, Sio has won prestigious awards including the Philipp Morris Art Prize and the GSIS Art Competition. Currently, he is also the Vice-Chair for the National Committee on Visual Arts of NCCA. Most importantly, Sio Montera is one of the most influential living artists of his generation.

Foto+Abstac|SIO|n 3 is more than just an exhibition. It is a lecture on art, on abstract photography, and on aesthetics as Montera trains the eye to see objects in a different light.


JV Castro is the Director and Chief Curator of the Sugbu Chinese Heritage Museum. Prior to his recent directorship in Cebu, he served as a curator and art consultant for Hafnia Foundation in Xiamen, China. He is one of the few graduates of the Art Management course at the Ateneo de Manila University. He is currently one of the leading authorities on contemporary Cebuano art.

Durement appuyé sur mon droiteyé. Mon centre cède. Impossible de manoeuvrer. Situation excellente. J'attaque.
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch

It is said that defeat makes a person more philosophical, and setbacks pave the way for a better understanding of all things, especially one’s outlook towards life. Courage can be found either foolishly through drink and a loaded weapon, or wisely through enlightened revelation arising out of cathartic disaster. For Cebu-based abstractionist Dennis “Sio” Montera, confronting his fears is part of the process in eliciting a more sublime and expressive experience in achieving aesthetic harmony and compositional reinvigoration. Using the unforgiving medium of asphalt tar along with acrylic media and paint since 2004, Montera elicits mysterious, meditative, and sometimes dramatic vistas of either monochrome or multi-colored panels that constantly focuses on his ability to use biographical and deeply personal experiences as source materiel for exploring ever-transforming—but always surprisingly consistent—abstracts.

In his current series titled SakripiSIO, Montera focuses on the uniquely Filipino understanding of sacrifice as both a hermeneutic process, as well as an epistemic totality that webs the individual, society, metaphysics and material existence together into a dialectic and redemptive experience. As a member of UP Cebu College Fine Arts faculty, and a UP alumnus from high school to graduate school, Montera has deeply imbibed the university’s notion of personal sacrifice to serve the greater good of the nation that is symbolized by UP’s preeminent statue, The Oblation. However, tacking closer to his recent life experiences, Montera also flags his recent struggles to balance social responsibility and personal fulfilment through the degree of gestural expression in his current work. Content with Failure 1-2 typifies this doubled search for both inner personal peace and outer compositional success by playing with three layers of color, white, ochre, and black, the last either dripped in fine lines over the underpaint; or else deftly brushed on like calligraphic ink strokes on ancient rice paper, forcing one to follow the energy of the idea and its fruition through the acceptance of things that cannot be changed (in Montera’s case, his need to constantly travel to further his art career, leaving behind family and his sick mother; or else encountering “frenemies” in the artworld). Crossing Bridges as We Come to Them almost figuratively illustrates in black, brown, and white the dilemma awaiting every strategic decision we make, and every promise we might break. Perhaps this aversion to personal pain is aptly illustrated in Do Not Promise Anyone Anything, a black rhomboid that juts across the white picture plane like a door that can only be entered with trepidation.

As a Cebuano living in an obsessively Catholic culture, Montera also shows the pathos of asking for forgiveness as a means of redemption through Confession, a trio of black and white figures swimming in a red field redolent of the fear of death. Fear is My Substance goes to the heart of the matter, as the picture plane of red, yellow, black and white patches becomes overwhelmed by a tsunami of blue—perhaps Montera’s reflection of the recent Sendai disaster, or maybe the reflection of his own oncoming fears. From Wounds to Wisdom perhaps signifies the beginning of acceptance and the willingness to move on, a large mass of black and white floating amidst a peach field. Another panel that speaks of chaos and the need for resolution is Disorderly Universe, where large raindrops of blue checker and nearly overwhelm black and white. This resolution of fear as color can be seen in the two panels Montera dedicates to his recent journey to Holland. As Frigid as the Rotterdam treats the icy winter of the North as a field of blue where life, rising in defiance from below, constitutes black, ochre, and orange. I am Not Amsterdam expands upon the “life” colors of ochre, orange, red, and black as an eclectic tapestry that privileges life rather than surrenders it. The resolution to confront fear thus reminds one of the famous Litany of Fear, recited in Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

This acceptance of the fate of others opens up the realization of life’s fragility, and the preciousness of one’s time set against the eternity of the universe. Life Half Spent works on this theme melodiously, the pentimenti-like strokes indicating both an acceptance of fate, and a redoubling of effort to achieve everything in the last half-life. Anger and Rage, as reflected on the degree of gestural energy in the painting, is recognized but held in check by control and balance, the elements that makes an otherwise chaotic life liveable. The realization of discord and random incident as part and parcel of existence is also seen in Old Sins Cast Long Shadows, a monochrome cataloguing of errors that must be confronted, and corrected. Patience is Power shows the path towards enlightenment, when broad strokes of white start to overwhelm black, and point the way to fulfilment. Place of Solace perhaps shows the site where sacrifice is met with acceptance, its green patches indicate nature and life. Indeed, throughout SakripiSIO, Sio Montera continues to show us why there is a need to defy the inevitability of death, betrayal, and destruction, not by raging against the dying light, but by silently reassessing how to give illumination to the remaining time that we have.