Works by Trek Valdizno (back) and Jet Melencio (front) in 'Ground Zero', a group exhibition curated by Roberto Chabet at The Art Center, SM Megamall from 28 February - 15 March 1997.

According to Chabet, ''Ground Zero' explores the sublime in terms of modernity. The romantic sublime sought transcendence in the encompassing vastness of creation. Modernity finds the sublime in the transcendent presentness of the man-made and the commonplace, the here and now, the moment or the immeasurable gap between moments. The artists in this exhibition situate the sublime in the ever-expanding vastness of the detonated ground zero. They seek it in the split of the split-second; they find it in the fullness of the void.

The commonplace and the seemingly banal - the psychic debris and ruins of everyday life - constitute the matter, form, and content of the toughly conceptualist, mixed-media works in the exhibition. It redefines the sublime - the ineffable quality of art - in terms of the end-of-the-decade, end-of-the-century, end-of-the-millenium anxieties of modernity.

Eschewing the romantic search of the sublime in the vastness of nature, the 10 young artists who spearhead cutting-edge, vanguard art in the country seek the sublime in the here and now - in the detonated ground zero of modern life. They seek it in the moment and the gap between moments, in the process memorializing the unnoticed and the unremembered.'

The exhibition included paintings, sculptures, and installations by Ronald Achacoso, Nilo Ilarde, Katya Guerrero, Jet Melencio, Joy Melencio, Jonathan Olazo, Juni Salvador, Gerardo Tan, Trek Valdizno, and Trina Valenzuela.