FOR HIS initial show, Ino Caluza has chosen the unlikely subject of steel, departing from the traditional blase‚ objects that inhabit the world of still life.

Away from the usual norm of a vase of flowers, a bowl of fruits and other artifacts of domesticity, Caluza has opted to zero in on objects that litter the work table, the garage or the storage area; these objects await reuse, recycling or disposal.

The objects represent discarded bits and pieces culled from the junk shop—metal pulleys, screws, locks, faucets, electrical plugs—that have partly or totally outlived their purpose or usefulness. In the words of the artist, these are "incongruous parts that for some reason or another never found their way into the whole."

Seemingly devoid of purpose, these objects have been transformed into veritable living things in Caluza's wild imaginings; they are conjured as characters in the arena of love and war.

In the triptych "Play Things," done in oil pastel and acrylic on paper as with all the pieces, Caluza has three characters engaged in playful poses: a discarded stapler, a clip binder wedged onto a hinge, and a spiky wire emerging from a fastener. In their magnified forms, these objects may strike the viewer as being part of a toy story, complete with arms and legs, and engaged in fierce mortal combat.

The stage is set for deadlier confrontation in "The War of the Irons," where the soldering iron is battling it out with a safety pin attached to a clip binder. It is, of course, only a make-believe war, and the protagonists are nothing but discards from the junk shop.

Ditto with "Delirium Drama," where the image conjured is of two locks interlocked with each other, the one with the spiky head emerging as the victor in the battle. Caluza stretches the idea a little too far in "Bull Fights," where the pins assume characters in a bull fight, ostensibly aiming for a kill.

Caluza does not confine himself to acts of aggression with these harmless gadgets. In the other pieces, he finds possibilities by way of lovemaking as scenario. In "Scene from the Intergalactic Coupling," a roundish, centipede-like object wiggles its way into its quarry.

A mathematics degree holder majoring in computer science from the University of Santo Tomas, Caluza possesses a transforming, if transformative, sensibility that enables him to experiment with his imagery. He laces his compositions with wit and mischief, but it appears that he could have pushed his sense of playfulness further to conjure deeper truths about his imagery and to make them endure in the viewer's imagination.