Kirby Roxas’ exhibit “A Hole in the Sky” does not announce itself with grand gestures. The works are modest in number, just six, but their presence fills the gallery with a quiet intensity. To spend time with them is to be reminded of how Kirby has consistently redefined the role of the painted surface. For over a decade, he has been creating lenticular paintings, the kind that shift depending on where the viewer stands, demanding an engagement that is both physical and perceptual. In this latest show, he pushes the idea further, constructing not simply shifting images but layered portals, openings into other places where memory, fantasy, and longing converge.

At first, the works appear straightforward. Acrylic on wood and canvas, neatly framed, hanging still against white walls. But the stillness is deceptive. As you move in front of them, scenes flicker and transform, the surface of the painting revealing multiple worlds at once. Kirby does not settle for illusion; he builds his canvases like layered stages, each one hiding another, like stories tucked inside stories. The experience is almost cinematic, as if each painting were spliced into frames of a film reels, and the viewer’s body moving across the room becomes the projector. 

Each of the six works carries a distinct atmosphere. “If They Lived, Happily Ever After” captures two children gazing upward toward a storybook vision suspended in the clouds. Depending on the angle, the scene shifts, suggesting not just the enchantment of fairytales but also the fragility of those endings we are taught to believe in. The painting carries both nostalgia and melancholy, as though reminding us that not all narratives close with “happily ever after.”

In “Dreamer’s Swing,” a girl arcs through the air on a swing, the sky around her transforming into a cage of birds and shifting clouds. The piece is light and playful at first glance, yet also weighted with yearning. The swing becomes a vehicle of escape, the sky a promise of elsewhere. Childhood fantasy and adult longing intermingle here, layered as neatly as Kirby’s acrylic surfaces. 

“Palocebo,” on the other hand, roots itself in Filipino cultural memory. Referencing the traditional game of climbing a greased bamboo pole, the painting shows a boy scaling upward, striving toward an unseen goal. The lenticular shift creates a dual sense of struggle and triumph, a metaphor for belief and persistence. One sees not just a child at play but also the broader human drive to reach beyond one’s grasp.

In “Sanctuary,” intimacy becomes architecture. A couple’s embrace forms the trunk of a tree, its branches splitting into portals that hold glimpses of other realms. It is at once personal and universal, an image of refuge that expands into a metaphor for the places of safety we carry within. This work, perhaps more than the others, demonstrates Kirby's gift for weaving tenderness with ambition.