ON FIRST ENTERING the Meridian Gallery, one might take the title of Homero Hidalgo and Shalo Peñuela's exhibit, "The Tormentors," to be a misnomer. The paintings on display are alive with color, dynamic brushstrokes, and swatches of fabric and tape – hardly expressions of suffering. But something menacing lurks beneath the surface. In Hidalgo's The Tempest, the colliding textures and colors conspire to create a storm at sea, with sharks swimming beneath the surface of the water, a lifeboat sinking into the waves, and a human hand reaching fruitlessly for help. In Peñuela's Double Paranoia, the layering of paint, tape, torn pages from comic books, and slices of patterned wallpaper oscillates between a delightful display of explosive fireworks and a nightmarish minefield of bugs, shrapnel, and high-voltage electrical currents. Outside on the rooftop behind the gallery, a monstrous hooded face with horns and spikes for whiskers bears its teeth, and an isolated figure sits wrapped in red fabric with his back turned and his head hanging down. Hidalgo and Peñuela share what Nietzsche described as the Dionysian "wisdom of Silenus" – namely, that suffering is the essence of life itself. Art and artifice, in turn, are for them equally essential palliative measures required to make this torment bearable, and to make possible our very survival. Their art stages this struggle by working through the pain of life with movement and light but never entirely eradicating or effacing the suffering that compels their labors. The artists discuss the exhibit at the closing reception (May 21, 2 to 6 p.m.). Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m., 545 Sutter, S.F. (415) 398-7229. (Clark Buckner)