Semiosis, Independent Artist Inc's 4th Exhibit
Liby Limoso
The artist constantly have the power to evoke various thoughts and interpretations even with just a single stroke. Often they are predominantly designed to uniquely interpret the underlying messages as a form of social interaction whether it be as an effect of unvoiced revolution, reprisal of emotions, discontentment towards the fragmentary system implemented in the society or tacit sensitivity on social issues. For the most part, each masterpiece contains symbols, objects, events and arbitrary codes that answers to the essential questions of our present being leading to an extensive representation of our lives and what it embodies -- our individuality, our consciousness and the intricacies of our judgment and views which closely are intertwined with space and time.
Semiosis is the result of the way thoughts and symbols are produced and consumed in the Philippine society. It is the central theme the Independent Artists of Iloilo (AIA) brought into play to approach every viewer the prevailing question: are signs, symbols, insignias, free, absolute, and solid or are they just repressed in favor of other existing signs, arbitrary and fluid? Hence, the exhibit tries to implicate the answers through the recent works of Faith Anastacio, Joseph Firmeza, Carlo Juntado. Liby Limoso, Norman Posecion and Rey Gico, a Fine Arts student from the University of San Agustin. The 13 frames completed by these various artists all rooted from the keyword box,where each of them has to think of notions denoted from it. Unsurprisingly, it resulted to remarkable art forms, transcending the viewer with one work of art to another creating within him an insatiable interests of conformity or contradiction.
Carlo Juntado
Carlo Juntado first captures with his work, Brown Monkeys Inc. It is his way of intrusion to one of society's predicament conveyed in the teenager he vividly visualized as a victim of mass consumerism. Just like a monkey, Filipinos are reduced to a group of people who merely follows and obeys due to what the majority wants but extravagantly excluding the needs of the mainstream public which leaves him without an identity, losing a soul and a distorted mind. In Hemispheres, he delicately but provokingly illustrated the structure of the human psyche, especially that of Filipinos at present. A form of alienation of one's self from the world due to the advancements of technology. In connection to this, his third frame, With a Little Help, broadly demonstrated the imprisonment of human beings to readily available information. For Juntado, one way to communicate, question, and confront the complex process of seeing ourselves not from our own perspective, with our minds unfixed and colonized by subliminal things, is exploring our withdrawn and unconscious beings where mystery unfolds and imagination never ends.
Non-Fat, O Life and An Educated is Joseph Firmeza's response to how humankind views the world at present. "Today we stand before the "dog eat dog" perception of how our lives revolve. It is as if every human interaction is injected with malevolence, or malicious intentions," he explains. His paintings question the very nature of humans: from innate to the most carnal needs, from conscious to subconscious, and from mundane to most inhuman acts. He deliberately expresses the degree of one's incapability to stray from insanity since he believes that the very symbols that shape our lives are also the ones that destroys us.
Joseph Firmeza
Rey Gico's Outbreak and Nil, highlights the idea that symbols can be contained or fixed perpetually. In his works he uses a disease to conceptualize humans as natural eccentrics through unreasonable fixation on earthly objects and uses the face as a blank canvass whether to create what it desires or to conceal genuine emotions.
A Fine Arts graduate from the University of the Philippines Diliman, and currently an art teacher in the University of San Agustin, Libby Limoso invites the audience with its thought provoking artwork and photographs emphasizing the basic elements of painting and the various innovations and artistic awareness of space in his works, Areas of Thought and Interest. 
Creating endless possibilities that can be done in a frame, the viewer as well is summoned to produce his own. Inspired by stratigraphy, a tool used by archeologists in marking/framing potential sites for excavation to gather information about a certain past in a distinct space, Limoso offers the possibility of reconstructing the "us" in us, with no biases on which frame one wants to select, by unearthing whatever knowledge on us a particular frame can offer, whether beneficial or not.
Faith Anastacio
It appears to be sentimental, maudlin or overly contained but in Faith Anastacio's works the obvious dictates the underlying question: What is going on? Written but not clearly expressed, To a Fool Called Otige and Till Tear Ducts Run Dry easily captivates the viewer with its uninhabited straightforwardness of sentiments and emotions depending on the situation the viewer creates.
Combining the three frames with dominant colors of silver, black and violet, Norman Posecions's A Second Look seems to re-emphasize what the other featured artists like to stress. The three frames appear to create a view that images are just reflections where only viewers can give structure and content on them. Whatever reality is produced from such images, it is very crucial tolook at them closely for human beings are easily persuaded by their naked eyes.
Semiosis opened last September 15, 2006 in Museo Iloilo and will run for a month. It is AIA's 4th major art exhibit following Testing Ground, Area 52, and Ikinograpiya.