SOBER TO DEATH: Andres Barrioquinto

Genius B.O.R.T.A. is Andres Barrioquinto’s sanctuary for works that do not demand categorization. It functions as a personal space for experimentation, in which he is able to confront ideas that do not conform to a single formulaic approach. It has been a common predicament for established artists to become traditionally bound into a single repetitive style that later becomes their defining identity. Over time, this turns into a prison of comfort, where they become compelled to meet the expectations of audiences that have invested their interest in the familiarity of the artist’s established aesthetic. Genius B.O.R.T.A. breaks this chain of redundancy and offers a new shift in perspective, in which an artist becomes free and sets to do what he is meant to, which is to simply produce artworks that resonate within his own personal truth.  Because the artist is the god of his own world, and is not some wild beast meant to be domesticated by kingmakers and exploitative, predatory gaslighters who lurk in the deep shadows of the art world.

In this enduring inclination to his personal truth, Barrioquinto’s body of work now becomes an autobiographical landscape that shifts unpredictably with the trajectory of his own consciousness. Every image and experience he encounters in his new life is now integrated into his work, perhaps becoming a mirror world that reflects his own in the most natural and authentic way that he can. Fragments of his life and memories become etched in each and every line in his work, forcing gestures that become a visualization of his maturing emotional state. Early in his life, his work showed his view of the world, the evil people around him, and the monsters that lurked in the hearts of deceptive men, but now, it has transitioned into a view of his own experiences within. Perhaps this means that he is done with detesting the unchangeable world around him, and after a harrowing, albeit cathartic state of ego death, he now tries to shift his view inward in an attempt to facilitate a deeper pursuit of understanding the self.

Sober to Death is a documentation of Barrioquinto’s afterlife in sobriety, in which he becomes a sleepwalker living in his own flesh. Each day is almost like a repetitive dream, an automatic routine where he attempts to preserve the very body that he has once thrown into an oblivious cycle of self-destruction. He presents new works that reflect the sarcastic wit of this title: a disquieting collection of strange, otherworldly portraits and mundane, everyday scenes that reflect an inner state of peace that he has found in the depths of his own soul. He visualizes these encounters through expressive gestures where his textured paint surfaces provide an aesthetic contrast with his almost clinical new approach in figuration, where he draws sharp, individualized images on a clean, flat expanse of paper. This introduces an element of aesthetic disparity between the two. His paintings depict the outside world as he encounters it as a stoic observer, while his drawings provide a more introspective approach tied to the inner self. It consists of deliberately controlled linework that feels emotionally detached and almost to a point, indifferent. Perhaps creatures governed by logic find refuge in this impenetrable state of peace, as their sense of detachment continually shields them from the pervading chaos of daily life. Maybe this is the isolated space where the artist has found a sanctuary of enlightenment, a place where he is not clouded by any voice but his own, a place where he gets to watch the world burn itself alive in a radiant sea of fire stoked by the very emotions it mistakes for the light of salvation.

Words by Dave Lock