Photograph of the neon text on a wall of GI sheets in Roberto Chabet's installation Day and Night.

In Day and Night, Chabet assembles his familiar GI sheets and neon texts with objects culled and salvaged from long-forgotten situations: a Jose Rizal magic slate that serves as a palimpsest of lost writings, school desks that allegorise flagellant hours and wanting to be somewhere else, and cast off ship bells that alert arrivals and departures. The neon sign decoys to cultic and psychological transformations, but is the namesake of a house of nightly pleasures that is levelled after World War II. It is a tableau of signs that re-engage and re-enact the makeshift walls of a classroom from a childhood memory. The installation’s host of meanings, anachronistic and synchronous, highly sentimental and romantic, objectifies ‘a greater personal mythology’.

The work was exhibited in Paseo Gallery, SM Megamall from 1 - 16 December 2011. The exhibition is part of 'Roberto Chabet: Fifty Years', a year-long series of exhibitions organised by King Kong Art Projects Unlimited in various venues in Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila from 2011 - 2012.