It would be simplistic to classify Andres Barrioquinto’s art in a single style. Undergoing an evident evolution over time, his research and approach result in a unique and distinctive language, representing his mature phase.
Barrioquinto's works moved from an initial stage, characterized by a more instinctive approach, expressed through what he was used to: strong engravings, and bolder signs. Vitality and energy were spreading from his canvas, a measure of turbulence and passion typical of an artist’s youth phase.
Then slowly and gradually his art naturally moved towards a new dimension, a cosmos of almost immaterial images, where the constant tread is the vanishing of the physicality and carnality. He embraced his mature aesthetic research, a distinctive language so unique to be now his artistic signature. Barrioquinto's subjects are almost dematerialized yet hyper-realistic, in an apparent contradiction that he wisely developed to reach excellence. In fact, his subjects, so realistically painted, become pure immaterial concepts, and ideas. Abstraction is not simply the opposite of naturalistic or representational art, however. It can also be an attempt to explain, depict, allegorize, or imagine the intangible with tangible ideas.
On this line, Barrioquinto literally crafted his own artistic alphabet which characterizes his art today. Sublimating beauty, he realizes the noblest still harder process a contemporary artist could operate; he is a gesture of independence and maturity, it implies the consequential abandonment of the reassuring elements of "carnal" and "real", faded away by the preponderance of the unconscious expressed in forms. Only confident artists can highlight their unconsciousness, choosing to base their art on a fragile thin line better than the stability and obviousness of reality. Thus his portraits are enriched with details taken from a dream world: mushrooms, birds, butterflies, and flowers, all archetypal symbols that do not fly but float, in a timeless suspension, like satellites that remain magnetically attracted to the subject's vibration. All like in a fairytale’s vision or in a dream. While Barrioquinto takes cues from the great renaissance and modernist periods, at the same time Japanese aesthetics is an essential reference for this mature phase. Sublimating forms and freezing movements, he stigmatizes a given moment in eternity.
No longer real, the image becomes a dream, a memory, an unconscious idea. The body loses physicality, its beauty turns to the ideal. His canvas refers to the art of other eras and other regions, revealing wisdom, knowledge, and culture. Barrioquinto’s world is filtered through the lenses of a particularly refined sensitivity.
Artist
Andres Barrioquinto
Born in 1975, Manila, Philippines
Andres Barrioquinto is currently resident in Manila, Philippines. His current occupation and specialization is being a Visual Artist. The artist graduated from University of Santo Tomas(UST) in 2000 from College of Fine Arts and Design Major in painting. Barrioquinto’s works are collected by important institutions like the Singapore Art Museum. In more recent years, Barrioquinto's works have developed a distinctive style of surreal and hyperrealistic portraits. With fine strokes in acrylic and oil, the artist renders recognizable faces in subdued tones. The darkness in his old style still creeps into his newer works, though masked by the calmness of flowers, birds, butterflies, and traditional patterns belonging to Japanese culture – specifically ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints from the Edo period. Barrioquinto’s exquisite image overlaying, patterning, and image appropriations from various Asian cultures create dynamic juxtapositions and open up numerous possibilities of interpretation, earning him both critical and commercial attention, locally and abroad.
Curator
Michela Sena
b. 1976
Michela Sena is a Rome-Bangkok-based curator and art critic. Her research relates partly to the potential of global language and the relationship and dialogue between contemporary artists coming from different territories. After she graduated in museology and art history at Roma Tre University and got a Chinese language degree at SISU Shanghai Foreign Studies University, she was Director of Primo Marella Gallery Beijing and Director of Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok. She curated a wide number of shows proposing a punctual snapshot of contemporary art research, developing in recent years a focus on Chinese and southeast Asian art.