Art Exhibit

DATI

Galerie Francesca presents

Kiko Marquez and Christina Baltero

“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.” 
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance

I first met Kiko Marquez in an artists’ mentorship program.  He was the instigating artist, the one who was socially adept and full of ideas.  He formed a group of highly skilled, young artists from Bulacan, and brought them to an art patron’s notice, who resonated with him, and realized that with a little training, these artists might make a mark.  Together with the highly acclaimed social realist painter Mr. Renato Habulan, I was asked to work with them.  

We would critique their technique, and push them to think artistically – to expand their visual vocabulary, and instill in them a sensitivity to the zeitgeist of our times.  And we were off to a very promising start as each of them regaled us with works that were technically adept and full of the bravura of youth.  But life happened.  And within barely a year, the program fell apart.  A few of the artists banded together and continued on their path of art.  Marquez set off, and started a family with Christina Baltero, who, with Marquez’ instructions, became a realist painter in the course of their deepening relationship.

“Dati” is a story of redemption.  It is the visualization of the yearning to remember: for Marquez, it is to return to the simpler life of a childhood recalled; for Baltero, it is in celebration of the youth of their daughter as she outgrows her clothes by the month.  Both artists paint in realistically, but express their poesy quite differently.  Marquez uses the idiom of a closed glass jar to express the idea of protection and containment on the one hand, and fragility, in the other.  Precious memories are stored, but are always with a risk of being shattered.  In “Hagonoy” for example, Marquez appears to imply the waterways which crisscrossed the land of his childhood, where he would set paper boats on, and gleefully follow them as they meandered through his neighborhood, through rice fields, and fens. In the succeeding eleven works, we see how adeptly he manipulates oil to create the illusion of glass and water.  We see him successfully construct many layers of meaning through the objects he chooses to encase in these jars.  We see that the painter is a poet with his imagery, which he composes with flourish and confidence. We see how he captures light and transparency, gloss and fluidity, movement and stillness, with his adroit brushwork.  We see why Marquez is in the running for this year’s Philippine Art Awards, to which he already is a semi-finalist. 

Baltero, on the other hand, presents a series of ten artworks, all of baby’s dresses, all her firstborn’s, to be precise.  Through simple composition, we see her loving attention to every moment symbolized by those dresses, as her child has worn them, and outgrew them.  We see the sentiments of an artist as mother, whose poetry is in the simple and quiet acceptance – celebrating the milestones of growth, while treasuring moments that too soon will be gone.  

Through recollection and celebration, as evinced by these paintings in “Dati,” Marquez and Baltero return to the path of painting, in their own very unique ways.  Through this exhibition, we see both artists express their individuality, similar in technique, but quite differently in how they see the world.  Through “Dati”, we see not only memory at work, but each individual’s capacity to transcend the finitude of time through meaning-making, which, in its own way, is the vehicle of our collective salvation.

-       Ricky Francisco

www.galeriefrancesca.com

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