Apparently, his brief sojourn in France last year as the lone Philippine representative in “le Vent des forets,” a unique outdoor international art exhibition in the rural town of Lahaymeix, has left quite an impression on Leonard Aguinaldo, the Cordillera artist who was introduced to habitues of Hiraya Gallery through his major individual show, which took place also last year, entitled “Chadjang and Other Rites.”

“Everything was like a pretty picture, a dream come true!”, he exults over the Gallic landscape, “natural and visual,” in annotating Walking in a Postcard, one of about a dozen works, in mixed media, that comprise his current exhibit. Describing France as “a dynamic place where ideas flourish and experimentation in artmaking takes place almost everywhere,” he settles down and, in a more thoughtful vein, sums up his experience there, particularly in Lahaymeix, as a “catalyst in my self-rediscovery.”

“It was the beginning of creative isolation,” he intones somewhat enigmatically.

The works in this exhibit, carved on neolite and painted in oil or acrylic in bright, pleasant colors that are atypically Cordilleran, are the product of that period of reclusive artistic activity, during which his “only link to the outside world,” he says, was via “a cellphone and the Internet,” as depicted in Message Sent and Ninuno sa Bintana ni Bill (Gates?).

Like in “Chadjang and Other Rites,” there are anecdotal elements, drawn from the artist’s experiences, in Creative Isolation, but these are more contemporary than traditional—even the featured rituals are mundane, as can be gleaned from The Policeman Who Ran Over My White Dog and Dog’s Life in a Man’s Life. The latter features a banquet that irreverently adverts to the Last Supper, with, no doubt, azocena as the main course. Unlike in “Chadjang and Other Rites,” however, the decorative elements—as found in the geometric design and symbolic motifs, are somewhat dominant in Creative Isolation.

A native of Baguio City, Aguinaldo, 34, has also exhibited in other foreign countries, namely South Korea, Japan, and Australia. His first solo exhibitions in the Philippines took place at the Baguio Mountain Province Museum and the CCP.