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[ From the Critics ]
Articles about Barrioquinto from Art Critics and Respectable Writers
Thirteen Artists Award
Andres Barrioquinto phantasmic intensity draws upon graffiti and pop
culture references, to produce works privileging the diaristic deviant.
He draws on shock and defamiliarization mechanisms to engage viewers
encountering his dark, brooding, often pessimistic and gritty figures
that have been left looking deliberately unfinished and indeterminate,
highlighting disharmonies and social tension.Playing on elements of
spontaineity and improvisation,Barrioquinto unveils an almost
self-destructive bluntness, as he discourses on beauty pain and despair
by juxtposing the stark and vivid, by densely meshing text and image,
and triumphing chaos to unmask halowness of vacuous harmonies.
13 Artist Awards,CCP
September 17,2003
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Portraits of Hybrid and Crosshatched Artists
By Constantino Tejero
Like the half human, half animal figures on his canvases, Andres
Barrioquinto may be said to be a hybrid artist. Utilizing the styles
and techniques of expressionism and surrealism, incorporating text and
the literary devices of allegory and personification, and investing the
work with a social realist content, he produces the postmodern.
In his fifth solo show, "Fhamvhenta Hezpesyal ", ongoing until May 20
in West Gallery Artlane, L/3, Glorietta 4, Ayala Cente, Makati City,
the artist showcase in 10 pieces of his edgy art.
This is made edgier by the tension between the exhibit's theme of the
selling of art and the atist's struggle not to sell out. What emerge
are images teetering between hilarity and horror, sometimes recalling
late Picao, often appearing like a blend of cartoon characters and
Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The nauseating imagery belies the playfulness, such as the fanciful
spelling of the exhibit's title. (The artist says he pelling is meant
to grab the gallery goers' attention, precisely the marketing strategy
he is satirizing about in certain artists.)
"Chemistry Between Us," in ink on pape, has a canine figure face to
face with a flattop man in shirt and tie, with the inscription Sikat na
Artista, Pendeho and Quamada.
"Dr. Evil's Secret Ingredients" charcoal on paper,porrays what looks
like a skeletal canine figure or a bovine skull, and include a recipe
consisting of flour, baking powder, paprika, salt and pepper, and dog.
This is funny, though a bit horrific if the viewer can read between the
lines.
"Artist for Sale", oil on canvas, depicts againsta blue green
background a simplified human form in orange with a gray apron streaked
with ochre and slate. It holds an ochre palette and has a cyclopean eye
with cobalt blue pupil, in a blue green ovoid, with a brown key on top,
surrounded by ochre rays.
The piece is inscribed with Artista pala la venta. Looking like a weird
teddy bear, the artist is here depicted as a wound up toy (of curators,
patrons, mentors, gallery-owners) Artists' Savior
" Fhamvhenta Hezpesyal" oil on canvas, is inscribed with poner en il
pader? And the title of the piece. Barely perceptible is the outline of
a lean human face in ochre, obviously, the artist's, which is
obliterated by streaks of white yellow,reddish-brown.
"Quando Morirai" pastel on paper, has a man that looks like a predator
bird or dog,in jacket outlined in black against slate grey and blue. It
portrays the artist like a hybrid Egyptian god, recalling ancient evil.
"El Gran Ventriloquist,"has a sallow-skinned Gaugin figure with brush,
paint tube and beret, inscribed "famoso" the figure partly obliterated
by streaks of red, violet and fuschia.Facing him is a yellow dogface on
a red hairy body, holding a green glass of red wine,fronted by a green
piece of steak on a blue green plate with brown fork and spoon.
At the bottom of the canvas is the passage: usted tienne las
habilidades, yo consiguio la celebros, hagamos porciones del dinero.
This is a portrait of artist and mentor in dialogue, or one speaking
through the other.
"Nouveauriche," oil on canvas, depicts a bullhead on a bloated and
sagging human body, crosshatched with pencil and painted ochre against
a slate-blue background. The face is obliterated by orange streaks, and
the figure encircled of what looks like a pen or arena in orange. At
the bottom is the inscription Super Toro Corned Beef..Ostensibly a
surreal depiction of canned meat, it I really a portrait of a get rich
artist, the go getter in the art scene.
"Mr. Clean," oil and drawing on canvas, porrays a yellowish bald headed
man, with cherub's wings, his sagging body naked, but for a tie, and
partly obliterated by streaks of brown, black and blue green. On top is
inscribed Salvador de las artistas, which shouls speak for itelf.
"Birch Tree (it's everybody's milk),oil and drawing on canvas, has a
grey beast against a beige background. It could be a bear, cow or dog
with multiple breasts, squeezing a teat and ostensibly squirting into a
glass its milk, which has been obliterated by streaks of black, blue
and brown. This then is a milking cow, so this must be a portrait of
the artist as mentor, nourishing younger artists for the wrong reason.
Examplary Artist
"Jeff Buckley," pastel on paper,has an ochre underpaint and a
slate-gray over paint from which emerges a pop portrait of the long
haired musician composed by black crosshatching of pencil and sketchy
lines of pastel. Barrioquinto admits Buckley as his icon, an exemplar
of the artist who is not commercialized and never a sell out. Placed at
the tail end of the exhibit.,his lonely visage seems to be a reproach
to the other portraits in the gallery, those commercial artists who
hunger for fame na "madali-in".
Barrioquinto says his works have been inspired by Buckley's music and
lyrics. "Lahat galling doon. I listen to him while I work." What's with
the obliteration though? Is there any meaning to this spoiling of the
canvas and marring of the figure? "I just got tired,"says the artist.
"Pag medyo may sira, mas interesting di ba?"
Barrioquinto is in fact, one of the most interesting artists of his
generation, and certainly one of the most awarded (prizes from the
annual art competitions of shell, Metrobank ,and the Art Association of
the Philippines;Honorable mention in the International Biennial Print
and Drawing Exhibition in Taiwan.). And he is only 28.
After attending an art workshop at the University of the Philippines, he took up Fine Arts at the University of anto Tomas.
Artists he admires include Jose Legaspi, Manuel Ocampo, Louie Cordero,
Charlie Co, Klimt, Munch, Chagall, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud.
On Why he has become an artist, Barrioquinto has an explanation so
simple as to be almost mystical: " Dahil ditto ako lagi bumabagsak.I
should be doing other things,but I always fall into this."
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Man As Animal, Animal as Man
By Alice G. Guillermo
Art: In one painting the female nude slithers on the floor to lick the
stem of a cocktail glass, Red stiletto heels are signifiers of vanity
as well as cruelty, since they are also weapons that crush without
mercy.
The Tres Acidos, a group of painter-printmakers, including Joel Mendez,
Ronald Ventura, Kiko Escora, Andres Barrioquinto and Butch Payawal, has
come up with a show at the SM Art Center entitled Animal. The name Tres
Acidos does not have to do with a membership of three (they are five
participants here) but refers to the 3 percent of acid that is used in
printmaking. Could it also mean the ingredients of acerbic irony that
give subtle flavor to their work? Likewise, this is basically a
thematic show being entitled Animal. The word "animal" itself, whether
in English or in Pilipino, has a wide range of significations,
beginning from the scientific and objective, as pertaining to a member
of the animal kingdom which biologically includes humans as well as
whales among the mammals, to its vituperative form in "Animal!," a
Pilipino word of Spanish derivation uttered with a ringing accent on
the second syllable.
Ronald Ventura deals with the human body in the form of male nude as a
physical yet complex entity. According to him, he paints male nudes
because they bear stronger residual taboo, unlike female nudes which
have become common and predictable. But his male nudes greatly differ
from the exercises and sketches that sometimes appear in gallery shows.
Like run-of-the-mill female nudes, these other superficial productions
have an element of cheesecake, now in a male version, meant to gratify
particular tastes. But Ventura's nudes (he also does female nudes but
more rarely now) have a complexity and artistic conviction that produce
an aura, a haunting presence that lingers in the mind. He does believe
that the body is a material shell, but it is also a vessel for the
spirit, but this in a nonbinary way since the mystery lies in how the
physical and the spiritual are fused together. In his personal
aesthetic of the human figure, he would like to break down the rigid
binary constructs of male/female, even as the symbols of yang and yin
enclosed within a circle each contains the crucial element of the
other. Thus, many of his figures have an androgynous quality and as
they foreground gender equality and sameness, assume a universalist
quality. This is indeed an ideal condition which he aspires for in his
art, for reality, on the contrary, only too sharply delineates the
power relations in gender relationships which are replicated in the
political arena. His male figures thus have a haunting classical
aspect. Part of this is his use of a smooth marmoreal tone rather than
the usual brown flesh tones. As such, they seem to be bloodless beings,
children of the moon. But to their flawless beings, quiet, with
measured gestures as in the stances of the classical statuary, he
introduces a trouble, as though garbled, passage as a reminder of
finiteness and decay. At times, too, he plays on the interchangeability
of man and animal, as when a standing figure, its hands spreading out
in the tension of surprise, sprouts a donkey's head, the assertion of
the unconscious.
For Kiko Escora, woman is represented as temptress, an erotic vamp, and
thus enters into the Manichaean dichotomy of good and evil, implying
that man is her willing or unwitting victim as he succumbs to her
blandishments and ploys. He situates his figures in a spare setting of
pink, red, white and black panels in untextured and solid color.
Rendered in light, flesh tones, the nudes are sinuous and serpentine in
form in various obvious attitudes of enticement. The visual props are
few and simple: cocktail glasses, stiletto heels and cigarettes which
constitute a specific iconography. Beyond these, the archetypal
temptress Eve has become complicitous with the snake as she, too, has
forked tongue, symbol of duplicity. In one painting, the female nude
slithers on the floor to lick the stem of a cocktail glass. Red
stiletto heels are signifiers of vanity as well as cruelty, since they
are also weapons that crush without mercy. Sexuality here is stifling
and predatory, outside the generous and redeeming impulses. Escora's
painting of an upside down bovine carcass hanging on hooks is stark and
ruthless in its image of predatory violence inflected on animals, and
metaphorically, on humans, by unfeeling social order.
The present paintings of Andres Barrioquinto constitute a relationships
and a dialogue between painter and subject, a narrative of a young
woman who is the object of his love and fantasy in a series of small
works in which she is the sole subject. There is also a certain
minimalist tendency here where the young woman is portrayed like a
wraithlike apparition in space, generally undifferentiated except, in a
few works, by solitary stone structures of a mystical atmosphere. The
stillness of the images and their soft, diffuse tones convey an
impression of remoteness and distance, as though the figure of the
young woman was viewed through the lens of memory and time, both
appearing and disappearing. In the last work of the series, the image
of the woman is replaced by a statue's head, that of a male, his eyes
closed, white as plaster of Paris, lying on a stone ledge in the
foreground, and casting a pale gray shadow on its surface. Behind him,
a grassy field stretches up to the narrow horizon behind, marked by a
low solitary building. It conveys a quiet, constricted, melancholy
mood, bewildering, likewise, and mysterious. In the text accompanying
it, the artist writes that he feels that the earth fall on him as it
falls on a person being buried in the ground-a statement of deep
sorrow. All the other works are accompanied by handwritten texts
dwelling on the woman and his angst at his unfulfilled love. There is
no question of the depth of feeling in the works, but it is conveyed
through basically Western imagery, that of the truncated classical head
on a ledge in a foreign landscape. Even more, the texts are in English
which carries the risk of grammatical lapses in the realm of personal
and intimate sentiments. Clearly, the use of the Pilipino would plumb
deeper layers of feeling and communication since the language stems
from the original identity as artist and Filipino.
The contribution of Butch Payawal to the show is a collection of
self-portraits in charcoal and paper. He works in a spontaneous and
cursory style in terms of line and tone in order to achieve an effect
of flux and constant change. The face is like a mask which
metamorphoses and extrapolates itself into a series of expressions
which can continue ad infinitum. The very nature of change defines his
own person which refuses to tie itself to any fixed essence but is
always rediscovering itself, as charateristic of the human animal. In
his present series, Joel Mendez has shown an absorbing fascination with
the image of Imelda Marcos, but as to how it is related to the title is
unclear in the works. Another artist proffered the explanation of
pinakamagandang hayop sa balat ng lupa, as in the old Gloria Diaz
starrer of the title. The artist does etherialize the familiar
photographic images of Mrs. Marcos as he embellishes or marks them with
esoteric symbols possibly related to the value system which she once
formulated for public dissemination. He uses the images in relation to
symbols or manipulates and superimposes them with materials such as
rattan weaves to bring out unusual effects, at the same time that a
sense of distance or dislocation emerges, as in metatext. Mendez
produces open-ended ambiguities, both approaching and distancing; his
personal psychological investment in the subject remains unclear. But,
for sure, taking Mrs. Marcos as subject of painting series has its
especial implications: indeed, it is not a face that one can simply
manipulate in a purely formalist approach, as Albers's famous abstract
series Homage to the Square. Nor can it just be treated with postmodern
aplomb. For her image is heavily invested with political and historical
significations. Never a private image, it is always a public image.
More important, it carries with it a social baggage of ideological and
emotional associations which one confronts even up to the present. A
conflictive image, it is saturated through and through with the peoples
memories of pain in struggle. Thus, even after 40 years, a formalist
approach to Mrs.Marcos image cannot be viable.
Daily Inquirer, Art Section
April 14, 2002
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Images of a Private Hell
By Alice Guillermo
Besides the incisions, there are also drippings that mark the figures
and their habitation. From the mouth of several figures blood issues
forth
STOP Killing Me! begs the title of Barrioquinto's latest show at the
West Gallery in Megamall. But the scream for mercy is muffled, as
though issuing from a cavern made of layers of numb flesh and empty
bones. Human figures, almost all often male, as in The Shadow Boxer,
appear frontally as though in a pose of quiet but intense confrontation
or accusation. But they are way past launching any physical challenge
or verbal vituperation, for they are like zombies with one foot in the
grave. These oil paintings are in predominant brown with passages of
yellow and red, as well as tones of gray and black for tone and the
definition of forms. They are unframed, creating the effect of being
part of the viewer's space. Often, the subjects are human figures, but
there are a number of abstract paintings which create a mood associated
with a site and place. In two paintings, The Shadow Boxer and Nocturnal
Me, there is a dual image of the standing male figure and its full
skeleton side by side. In the first, it is a clothed full figure, while
in the second it is a fleshy nude torso, devoid of any. physical
appeal, its exposed parts sadly ludicrous. Always, they belong to.
another plane, outside the living, breathing plane of existence. They
are like reified exhibits of human bark, their claim to identity thin
and fragile, lacking the density of life. Clothes, if at all, are
purely ritualistic. Their eyes, without the dark irises that focus
sight, are only , empty and blind apertures that make no contact with
the exterior world. They are like blind windows or arches of abandoned
structure. As such, the figures have a profoundly alienated aspect: a
single touch may cause them to collapse into a pile of moldy ashes or
melt them into their skeletons. When nude, the flesh is gray and
bloated one's private shame and the secret habits of the body
mercilessly laid bare. One would think of it as flesh in a
slaughterhouse were it' not so bloodless and inert. In them, the human
body's grace has fled; there are no seductions of an erotic or sensuous
nature.
The artist does not shrink from depicting skulls and skeletons which
construct a grim imagery of death. In the deformed skulls, the bony
rictus is a frozen sneer or snarl rather than a smile. The skeletons
are often full length with the rhythmic arching bones of the rib cage
that enclose an empty space where life has long since fled. But in
them, the artist transgresses anatomy, . because the horizontal pattern
of the ribs continues down the abdomen to the legs in a contrast
between light solid form and dark empty space. In this unremitting
grimness, one can count the bones in sequence, and such a numerical
operation only heightens the quality of reification-all bones accounted
for in an inhuman reckoning like that of the cash register, possibly.
In the paintings which juxtapose the clothed figure or the nude with
the skeleton, this do not convey a contrast between life and death or
between the living flesh and the bony structure within. Rather, this
juxtaposition only brings out two planes or levels of death: the inert
flesh, clothed or unclothed, and the bones, complete in their
ball-and-socket joints and their lengths, hollow and brittle.
Doubtless, in the history of art, nudes, or the human figure in
general, have been often departed from the representation of ideal form
within the classical aesthetics. It has been pointed out by Kenneth
Clark that in Rembrandt's nudes, such as Bathsheba, the rendering of
the fleshly body, its lines and striations, lumps and irregularities of
form, and uneven distribution of tones, its very history of use and
abuse, is such that it expresses the living spirit within, its
movements, impulses, aspirations and desires, its very quality of being
human in an individual way. So that even in the imperfections of the
flesh, there is a transcendence over the material and the physical
toward spiritual significations. Rembrandt also did use the subject of
the carcass in the slaughterhouse. In this, too, there was a
transcendence over the gory physical fact to an aesthetic of light
bathing vulnerable form like an unexpected benediction. This, too, was
apparent. in the works of Chaim Soutine on the same subject.
However, in these paintings of Barrioquinto, the theme of transcendence
over the physical is not central but only incidental. This theme may
operate in a number of the works, however. In Solitary, which shows a
face softly emerging from the shadows, there is a yellow flood of light
on the side. On the surface, this light brings in a dramatic effect to
an otherwise quiet monochromatic work in brown tones. But its
significations are ambiguous. It may be a supernatural presence
impinging on the scene, although no relationship is shown between the
woman's face and the flood of light. It may signify a redeeming
potential since the face is quiet and inward, of a contemplative cast.
In other paintings, the light appears beside the skeletal structure
which seems to be bending toward it from the darkness. It may be
possible to read intimations of redemption in the passages of light,
but these may be resisted by the quality of these luminous passages.
These are gritty, roughened by tiny sand like particles, as well as by
graffiti scratching as though done by fine nails or blades that scar
the surface with long marks.
The effect of these graffiti is quite physical, alluding to sadistic
markings on skin. They also hint at punishment, physical and spiritual.
On looking at them, one feels the grating movements smarting with
physical pain. And pain is an essential part of the virtual existence
of these figures, although it has been muted from having endured it for
so long. What are left are the traces, marks and scars that they bear
through all their levels of life-in-death. But besides the incisions,
there are also drippings that mark the figures and their habitation.
From the mouth of several figures blood issues forth in a continuous
flow, indicating the extremity of existence. Color washes are made to
drip in long, fluid stains. Sometimes these drippings are dark, like
blood from old wounds.
Today Newspaper
July 1, 2001
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Pondering the Dark Art of Barrioquinto
By Roel Membrado
Apparently, eerie movies, dreadful books and bloody creatures of one's
imagination has nothing to do with a well-defined man who do not refuse
to see the others side of reality; but indeed, he will just focus his
nature to defy the truth around him. Nevertheless, art is inevitably
constructed by his innermost fear and passion, which makes it
consumable alone as what it makes him - Andres Barrioquinto.
At the early part of his career, Andres Barrioquinto seemingly
traversed his yesteryears with the joy of expressing himself through
painting. He was a tender-footed artist who often saw images of
anguish, dislocation, and even decapitation. A sudden turn of events
changed his way of thinking and unbelievably almost all of the good
memories in his head. Perhaps, this circumstance swept away the joy of
his being and affected the principles he applied in his Art.
Andres in fact, is an admirer of New York graffiti artist Jean
Michel-Basquiat and Edvard Munch who had greatly influenced his works.
Among our local artists, he prefers Jojo Legaspi's art best, which
portrays a hazy distinction between existence and death. It is where
Andres derived and heightened his ability to depict people in brutal
fashion of brooding, rust drenched composition. He confesses that he
does not abide the laws of colors but merely suits his artistic
composition with his changing moods. What matters to him is the
satisfaction of his hunger for self-expression.
Over the past few years, Andres bagged numerous awards for excellent
renditions, making his name as a polished artist of his time.
Considering him as a fledgling artist struck by luck, art critics and
connoisseurs often consider Barrioquintos art as harsh, complex, and
mostly a disheveled opus with an eerie character. One said that his oil
on canvas that placed third in the Art Association of the Philippines
contest in 1997 "couldn't give heed to its pastel tones for the sake of
compositional sincerity, contradicting its vie noire statement with
affectatious put-ons!." Another purveying critic phrased Andres
cousin's art teacher, "that his oil didn't deserve the top prize" in
the first Urban Bank competition in 1998. He was dubbed as a mere
novice, which can be insulting, but Andres shrugs off the barbs with a
laugh. For him, "life can sometimes be too harsh that if you're not
bolstered by your principles and beliefs, you can be spurned down
easily." Andres is the type, which is cradled by what he believes.
Barrioquinto is likely to be more sharply individualized than the
realist. His individuality became more distinct when he attempted to
probe his soul more than his ideas, or express his inner world of
turbulent moods more, than the harmonious external world.
He paints images and forms constantly distorted and totally warped that
take us away from the world we are in and bring us closer to his world.
In extremes, this expression may even become hysterical or frenzied.
Andres also endeavors new means of expression, seeking new directions
and exploring new medium while he settles on traditional media and a
methods of working. This would be the excellent time in his development
as an artist: to experiment, to meet and enjoy the challenges of the
various materials present, and to keep alert for the inevitable
accidents that appear as he works so he can take advantage of them. In
his paintings, for instance, the colors sometimes blend together or
overlap to create an admirable but unplanned effect; pencil marks or
under painting may unintentionally show through, hence enhancing his
work. Surprises can crop up in any material he uses, often giving rise
to new ideas. It would take decades of studies to create masterpieces
as he does.
Vision Magazine, 2nd sem 1999-2000
Issue no.35 vol. II 4
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Distortion as Metonym
By Jose Tence Ruiz
It is an anatomical anomaly, to be sure, this image of a woman's
abdomen with the umbilical cord extruding from the navel. It will have
to work only as a overstretched metonym, and somehow, one feels that
Andres Barrioquinto, 23 years young, precautious, compulsive
portraitist has come down to a part of the body with which he is not in
his depth. We may definitely be accused of taking the reading into too
literal a field, just as much as when one examines a painting of a face
in most modern/post-modern occasions and hopes for a Grecian placement
for the nose and nostrils, and instead finds one warped into the arena
of gesture-as-content metaphor in the manner of Francis Bacon (whom
Barrioquinto incidentally admires.) And if distortion of or deviation
from the anatomical figures found in the medical books is not allowed
some leeway, then, why resort to it at all?
Barrioquinto recounts the period surrounding the making of Umbilical.
It was a point when, responding to a brief to depict his notion of
ownership vis-à-vis women's bodies, he found himself estranged from a
girlfriend, where the resultant torpor was something that even this
draftsman found too debilitating to shake off. How does one care about
the question at all? How does one care about the fate women when women
seem not to care about his? To the artist came a transcendent answer.
For there was one woman who would care, show or not to show, girlfriend
or none, the woman from whom he took his own umbilicus.
This particularly non-too Vesalian metaphor would have to be crude,
direct, visceral, unthinking, blindly instinctive. But in moments of
parental, nay, maternal redemption, all of the above descriptions would
apply. Mothers love in an enigmatically redemptive manner. Their
salvific warmth would appear to come straight from the navel, brutally
non-negotiable caring, Worthy of a metaphor brut.
In the last few years, the young Barrioquinto consistently flashed this
penchant for the expressive "regurgitation" of images. In this sense
the images are ingested with the eyes, mentally and emotionally
masticated. From their original configuration, the images are
re-arranged, readjusted and keyed into a keen emotional pitch by his
direct and near-seismographic rendition of line and faded color. One
cannot but reference Northern European alienation, similar to that
shared by Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele and even the regally acerbic but
elegant Gustav Klimt.
Barrioquinto, who, in his pre-adolescent years was already a restless
draftsman, found himself dragged into the anxiety-ridden lot of a
teenager displaced by migration. With his journalist father having
moved the family to Hongkong just two years after Corazon Aquino's
magic as EDSA's Joan D'Arc was beginning to yellow, Andres had to cope
with growing up in what was then described as one of the world's rudest
cities.
He sought refuge in comics, the mordant post/punk wit of Stephen
Morrisey and The Smiths, the elegant skepticism of Oscar Wilde's prose,
poetry and memoires. There were the nights, too, spent at the video
arcades, where the violence programmed into the gaming would often
enough seep into real space and time. To say the least, Andres'
encounter with the teen gangs who lorded it over the arcades and showed
no tolerance for this tall, taciturn Filipino, who often beat them at
their electronic turf, was another motherlode of emotion that would
fuel his next few years of artmaking.
Andres' father opted to return to Manila in the mid-90s, partly
encouraged by a better economy in the Ramos years, and partly he was
deeply concerned that the violence Andres was getting exposed to might
have irreversible effects.
Coming back to study Fine Arts gave Andres a measure of decompression.
Using schooltime to produce a thick body of paintings and drawings, his
visual work opened a valve to an inner purge. His portraits could be
generally bracketed under what teens then labeled Gothic which, did not
refer to flying buttresses and rose windows but rather to brooding,
candlelit chilly, dark interiors as the setting for the horrific, as in
Notre Dame and the Hunchback. Gothic was appropriated to describe a
post-punk sub-genre that took in strains of heavy metal, sci-fi and the
arid and detached nihilism of a generation raised on the hypnotic
techno-terraine of the computerized dungeons and dragons, Gameboy,
Nintendo and cyberspace.
Andres took up Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas which, while
being noted for having instigated both the modern and postmodern agenda
in the Philippine art, retained a roundly academic curriculum based on
the colonial tradition of the European salon and late Eighties
resurgence of figuration via the Social Realist influence of Habulan,
Delotavo and Talusan Fernandez. Andres settled himself into this, yet
produced reams of distorted portraiture that effectively displaced him
from this training. Only his consistency convinced his instructors that
he was capable of moving forward or not he absorbed the modes prevalent
in school. And move forward he did, finding approbation in winning
major art competitions, i.e. the Art Association of the Philippines,
the Metrobank, the Nokia Art Awards and even gaining a slot at the
Taipei Biennial for Drawing in 1999.
Despite his psychological asynchrony from the curriculum, he was given
the UST Benavidez Award, one of the highest crossover honors the
university gave its graduates. And all of this for applying the very
same angst-soaked sensibility to paint a series of confessories,
groupings of melancholic/strung-out visages of friends, peeves,
neighbors and loved ones.
It is often culturally-ingrained denial reflex to say that
exaggeration, when applied to people one has affection for, is at the
very least, unflattering, if not outright demeaning. In Andres' case,
it is frank, if idealistic depiction of unqualified closeness, a
warts-and-all kinships with those immediately around him. He need not
feed on the sensibilities of Bram Stoker, or Alex Nino or any other au
courant spokesman of urban alienation to formulate his portraits. He
need only look out at his compound, located in the dreary Tandang Sora
district, and observe the unbearable lightness of mortality that
surrounds him.
There would be his grandfather, near-senile yet alive, his younger
brother afflicted with Down's Syndrome, his neighbors living lives of
quiet desperation to feed his voracious urge to draw.
In the context of this exhibit, Andres would be relatively underaged,
and possibly underexperienced to give a profoundly nuanced account of
his encounters with women and their corpus. His efforts would have to
be seen as ruminations on what could be, not on string of
what-they-were. Having just disengaged from a relationship outside of
his own nuclear family, Barrioquinto would therefore file his opinions
about such under work-in-progress. But vision cannot and should not be
hothoused and we may have to learn to enjoy the rawness of his corporal
naivete, as well as appreciate that, at his stage, his relationship
with a woman, now begun in its cycle of fits and starts, would still be
linked to home. He did admit that the breakup between him and his
girlfriend served to indirectly refocus on his primordial bond with his
father and the umbilical one, his mother. Hence, the anatomical
misrepresentation becomes a guileless, but nevertheless heartfelt
summation.
In light of the premises posed by the operative question here, there is
an answer indicated. For Andres Barrioquinto, the answers to "Who owns
women's bodies?" has become clear. They belong to nobody if they do not
belong to her children.
WOWB Book
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M.M.Y.
By Jose Tence Ruiz
It might be disappointing for some of us to hear Andres Barrioquinto
does not have to dwell on Bram Stoker, Mars Ravelo, Alex Nino or some
other more au courant preacher of the gothic to arrive at his brooding,
rust drenched compositions.
He needs only to contemplate his grandfather, physically frail and
near-somnambulistic, with a visage shorn of teeth, withered and
deepened by the weight of a lived life. He needs only to share the
inner world with his down-syndrome brother and probe, with filial
empathy, the parallel privacies and distances open to the loved ones we
call special.
He needs only look out at suburbia, his home and peer longingly into
the pigeonholes that real-state developers lovingly label as condos and
townhouses, and notice his neighbors, friends and acquaintances and
their daily waltz with the horrors of the humdrum. Creeper movies and
pulp fiction can only hope to approximate the unbearable lightness of
being in Tandang Sora in the 90s. Barrioquinto spent some formative
years in pre-turnover Hong Kong, then jostling with New York for the
title of world's rudest city.
The son of migrant journalist, he evolved a repertoire of coping that
included nights at gang-infested video arcades, where the violence
mostly electro-digital, sometimes crossed over into real space. No
classroom text could stand in for this hard-knocks literacy. In his
pre-teen years, before Hong Kong,
Andres would hang out at the art department of a major Filipino daily
where his father worked as a business editor. Returning to Manila in
'92, he re-visited this inclination and enrolled in the Fine Arts. What
has proceeded from this has become salvific, both for Andres, the
painter, and for us, who would give an ear to the lexicon of intensity
that living in the 'ordinary' world has bestowed upon one of us.
Mamaya Na
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Timesman's son triumphs in Nokia painting tilt
Andres Barrioquinto first place with four other winners in the 1999
painting contest yesterday. The 24-year-old is the eldest child of
Socorro Jarillas Santos and Manila Times business deskman Cesar
Barrioquinto. The five winners each received P96,000 and a plaque from
the Swedish Telecom Company.
Their works will represent the Philippines in a regional competition in
Singapore later this year. A graduating student of fine arts at the
University of Santo Tomas, Andres also won first prize in Metrobank's
Painting Competition in 1998 And in Urban Bank's first painting contest
the same year. He placed third in the Art Association of the
Philippines' annual contest in 1997. His other woks have been cited as
juror's choices in various other competitions.
A Filipino art gallery owner has described Barrioquinto's Metrobank
painting as comparable to Edward Munch's famous Scream. "I like his
sense of color very much," a proud Cesar told The Times. He also
recounted how last year's Metrobank citation described the young Andres
as a "master." A representational painter, Andres received one of UST's
highest honors, The Miguel de Benavidez Award. A government arts group
has invited him to enter a piece for a painting exposition celebrating
the new millennium next year.
The Manila times Online, 1999
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Barrioquinto wins Taiwan Biennial art competition
By Nancy T. Lu
Filipinos are not short of artistic talent. Creativity is something
that they will flaunt naturally if given the opportunity. When the
council for Cultural Affairs announced earlier this week the winners of
the competition organized in connection with the 10th International
Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition, 24-year-old Andres Santos
Barrioquinto emerged as one of the eight most outstanding artists in
the drawing category. Barrioquinto's winning entry was titled "Keep In
Touch… Screw and Nuts." The work - one of the 1,387 entries submitted
this year-received an honorable mention.
Each contestant was allowed only one entry. Using a mixture of
techniques, this fine arts student from the University of Santo Tomas
in Manila featured condoms in his award-winning drawing. Andrzej
Glowacki, a Polish jury member, remarked: "The entry would appeal to
the playboy."
Barrioquinto would be invited to make a one-week all-expense paid visit
to Taipei later this month, during which he collect his NT$50,000 cash
prize. Along with other 15 winners - including eight in the print
category - from different countries, he will participate in various
activities to be capped by the awards in the ceremony, the opening of
the exhibition and sale of the works, the proceeds of which will be
donated to victims of the 921 earthquake.
"The entries in the drawing category this year were really of high
quality," recalled Liao Shiou-ping, a famous printmaker who acted as
one of the judges in the final round of the contest."Do you know that
we had to carry out the judging seven times to arrive at a consensus?
Throughout the judging, the identities of the contestants in their
nationalities were keep from us," said Liao.
Winning awards is not new to Barrioquinto, who lives in Quezon City.
Only last year, he won first prize in the oil category in the Metrobank
Young Painters' Annual Competition. The same year he was awarded first
prize also in the oil category in the Urban bank's First Art
Competition. He placed third in the representational painting category
in the Art Association of the Philippines' Annual Art Competition in
1997.
This young and talented Filipino's track record shows that he will go
far his chosen career. Taipei waits for his forthcoming visit. Andres
Santos Barrioquinto's "Keep in Touch…Screw and Nuts" has been picked
from 1,387 entries to receive an honorable mention at the 9th
International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition in the Republic of
China.
Barrioquinto is the first Filipino to receive such a mention in the competition
This work uses changes in rich color, supplemented by energetic black
lines. The lower half of the body and the human head in the picture
creates a strong impression and form a clear contrast. It is both
therefore representational and abstract. The technique could even be
called as skillful.
China Post Foreign Voices
October 10, 1999, Biennial Taipei
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Barrioquinto crashes Taiwan art scene
By Emmanuel Torres
A boost to drawing in the region has been the
International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan.
Last year's 9th Biennial awarded an Honorable Mention to Andres
Barrioquinto (b. 1975), the first Filipino to be so honored in this
prestigious art event.
Established in 1983 as a print biennial, it started to
admits drawing in 1993, thereby making it, in the words of curator Lai
Yingying," one of the most exclusive international graphic exhibitions
in the world." Significant about this biennial is its tremendous effort
in extending the conventional parameters of the graphic arts. In his
catalogue preface, the chairman of the Drawing Committee, Lu Ching-fu,
ponders over crucial issues posed by growing numbers or mixed-media
artists. "What about drawing and ink works, monochrome paintings, the
sketches or records of conceptual art? If colored works are also
acceptable, then…many watercolor paintings also become eligible…[but]
if all of these categories are included, then the level of
participation will naturally increase."
He further notes: "Moreover, in the last few years, as
the lines between various types of art have become more and more
Biennial Asian Art News blurred, so [has] the distinction between life
and art… also disappeared.
Given this situation, is not insistence that we maintain
a competition based on a single art technique merely the reappearance
of artisan behavior? These problems can also be resolved by…conducting
symposium discussion."
Barrioquinto's winner, Nuts and Bolts (the artist's
original title: Screw and Nuts), now in the collection of Taipei Fine
Arts Museum, would fit nicely into the grove of such discussions. Like
so many of this year's entries, his is not based on a single art
technique but on several.
A large colored work on paper, parts of which are
finished, others sketchy, his complex entry juxtaposes visual images
and verbal texts (with some words visibly crossed out). And like many
of the entries by others still in their twenties and thirties,
Barrioquinto's is a media mix of oil, pencil, and chalk pastel
depicting undernourished bodies, condoms and skull, a vision of a
loveless world of sex and violence in a dehumanized, techno-sensate age.
First prize deservedly went to Taiwan's Chau Yen-Wen for
her entry, which consist of collage (a yellowed paper pattern of
cheongsam), ink, charcoal, thread, and tea. Like Barrioquinto, she
incorporates handwritten texts, notations and inscriptions, into her
visual imagery. Overall her drawing-collage manages to suggest that
there was no other way she could have made so sensitive a symbolic
portrait of her dressmaking mother and her sewing machine except by
using multiple techniques.
Biennial Asian Art News Both prize-winning works are
sending signals to the international art community that the Taipei
Biennial is open to all manner of innovative graphics-with all "their
multiple possibilities and uncertainties"-in an effort not to confine
prints and drawings to fixed definitions. Its outlook is clearly a
recognition of new modes of expression aiming at doing greater justice
to the ambiguities and contradictions of an electronic global village.
Moreover, this biennial is prepared to engage in
critical discourse by holding symposiums on questions raised by
openness to contemporary innovation and experimentation.
Emmanuel Torres is a professor of literature and art, a
critic, a prize-winning poet, and curator of the Ateneo University Art
Museum, Quezon City, Metro Manila.
Asian Art News Volume 10 No. 4 July/August 2000
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