"The dynamics between men and women is the center of our lives on earth. And it is endlessly entertaining." - Mike Nichols

Everyone will walk into the loop of romance when HIRAYA GALLERY opens its door for the one-woman exhibition entitled "CLOSER" by US-trained Filipino artist Maya Muñoz. "Closer unfolds in successive huge frames a personal tale of a woman's ascent to the peaks of her obsession as a lover.

The persuasion to love and to be loved stem from the memories of the first sexual gaze and the upturning force of emotional distances in the dynamics of loving and knowing. "Closer" is Maya's paean to love adorned by her sense of aesthetics with her brushes. Not one to keep her impressions nil, as her "snapshot style" has indicated in her past exhibitions, Maya now exposes her derring-do by drawing full figures, brushing her boards with unusual and compelling colors, and saturating her exhibition with an elegant and wholly-rounded theme.

In "Closer," Maya displays the quick melding of her artistic tools--palette, emtotional currents, critical intelligence--into throbbing images of her delectation. Maya encrusts on her frams the various states of her moods and feelings towards the lone figure of a man whom she malleably draws far and then close to her. In the alteration of his poses, she creates an elliptical narrative about the events which transpire between them, and states her truth about each change that came along.

Every frame becomes an intimate experience for the viewer with the woman's unspoken but fiery reaching-out beyond her sex and convetional role. The splashes of her color is Maya's style of self-indulgence. In "Closer," she uses it as awe-filling expressions to narrate the realities of her emotions and thoughts. She extols the love that she discovers inside her lover's mantle of manliness in her own brand of blue. In a huge fragment of a blue heart, she uncovers his truth. It contrasts with the chrome splattered face that is worn like a mask and a black undershirt as apparel.

These pose as challenges to the weighing pulses of love. Waking up from the hot spells of passion, Maya realizes the change in her awareness. Suddenly the lover has truend into a million pixels and doses of love. His whole warmth overflows into tiny throbbing forms, which draws all of her to a higher search. His presence engulfs her mind and heart totally to the point that she becomes enfranchised to hold the burning coals of his humanity and destiny. He becomes a blur image of her entire impulses.