ANDRES BARRIOQUINTO

It would be simplistic to classify Andres Barrioquinto’s art in a single style. Undergoing an evident evolution over time, his research and approach results in a unique and distinctive language, representing his mature phase.

Barrioquinto’s works moved from an initial stage, characterised by a more instinctive approach, expressed through what he was used to: strong engravings, 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 dematerialised 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, ideas. Abstraction is not simply the opposite of naturalistic or representational art, however it can also be an attempt to explain, depict, allegorise, or imagine the intangible with tangible ideas.

On this line Barrioquinto literally crafted his own artistic alphabet, which characterises his art today. Sublimating beauty, he realises the noblest and most difficult process a contemporary artist could undertake; his is a gesture of independence and maturity, it implies the consequential abandonment of the reassuring elements of ‘carnal’ and ‘real’, which fade away as the unconscious, expressed in many forms, overwhelmingly prevails. 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, 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 stigmatises 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 canvases refer to art of other eras and other regions, revealing wisdom, knowledge, culture. Barrioquinto’s world is filtered through the lense of a particularly refined sensitivity.

About the Artist
Born in 1975, Manila, Philippines Andres Barrioquinto is currently resident in Manila, Philippines. His current occupation and specialisation is being a Visual Artist. The artist graduated from University of Santo Tomas(UST) in 2000 from College of FineArts and Design Major in painting. Barrioquinto’s works are collected by important institutions like the SingaporeArt Museum. In more recent years, Barrioquinto’s works have developed a distinctive style of surreal andhyperrealistic portraits. With fine strokes in acrylic and oil, the artist renders recognisable faces in subduedtones. The darkness in his old style still creeps into his newer works, though masked by the calmness offlowers, 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, andimage appropriations from various Asian cultures create dynamic juxtapositions and open up numerouspossibilities of interpretation, earning him both critical and commercial attention, locally and abroad.