As a visual fairy tale, the show acquires a didactic quality not only characteristic of parables, but of Surrealism as an artistic movement as well--which is an obvious influence to Torres' work. But while "Spotlight Dilemma" possesses the subdued eeriness of Surrealist precursor Giorgio de Chirico's pittura metafisica, its wild narrative coherence is more indebted to the strain of magic realism familiar to lovers of H.P. Lovecraft. Another way of saying it: the show may be a magic realist parable, but it advocates surrealistic morals.

This isn't to say that Torres' oeuvre is grim and humorless. Supported by Suarez's texts, Torres' show is at times bawdy, wrenching together the comic idiom of Palibhasa Lalake and that of early Woody Allen, giving them a fantastic spin. Underneath the apparent monochrome of his paintings (the lead characters being albinos, the whites and blacks are only occasionally punctuated by color) lies a narrative pastiche of dissonant allusions and illusions, waiting to be reconciled and reworked together by the bewildered audience.