In the cell phone domain, text messages are forced to look abstract. To save on space, time and effort, the texter resorts to spelling shortcuts or omitting words to shorten sentences. But these are done in the best way as not to compromise the intended message. In Baen's turf, a little bit of abstraction is intentional. It imposes the use of metaphors, distortions and all sorts of friendly visual deceptions. To mesmerize is more important than care for the exact meaning of his images. There may even be a deliberate, sinister motive to hide true meanings from the eyes of those who cannot accept the truth, as well as from the eyes of those who have the power to cover truth. It gratifies the artist more to excite the viewer who could find out the truth like a prize at the end of a puzzle.

This is how the painter, Pablo Baen Santos came out with SMS as a title for his show which is the acronym for Short Messaging System. In the artist's sense, panting falls under this order for a glance at images quickly returns a barrage of suggestions. More literally speaking, Baen has speckled most of his recent paintings with short, choppy inscriptions in the same breath that a gifted child would compulsively do on house walls and artistic vandals, on public walls.

He is in search of more waggish approaches to exposing social ills and protesting political abuses in his art—after so long, when it might have become too tiring to vent nothing but anger. He had been doing so since 1975, on his first exhibit of social realism. Art with text permits him more color and child play on the canvas.

Baen's recent paintings will be exhibited this coming August 11-23 at The Crucible Gallery, 4^th Floor, Megamall A, Mandaluyong. The painter, a Thirteen Artists awardee in 1990, was the founding chair of Kaisahan, the first formal group of nationalist painters in the Philippines , formed during the Marcos regime. The group came out boldly against martial rule as well as against those who considered mixing politics with art as an artistic desecration.