Perdido Eden, Ode to Art, Singapore - 2013

Mark Andy Garcia uses an expressive mode to convey the authenticity of experience and being, aug- menting subjective values. His work is often diaristic in nature, recording and communicating his life experiences from pure bliss and everyday contentment to redemptive grief; his palette corresponding to the emotional colouring, his brush strokes rapid, capturing the fleeting sense of existence and some- times incorporating fragments of text. Meditating on Rizal’s poem, he turns to the idea of freedom and of its correspond- ence with truth, inflecting his interpretation with a distinct Christian morality. The artist personifies Rizal as a preacher figure, whose message about a lost Eden as relevant today for all as when it was first spoken. Therefore, through accessing the transcendental, the artist explores the transcultural and transnational significance of the poem. 

(words and curated by Isabel Ching)

“Preacher” 2012 Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 121.9cm

MARK ANDY
GARCIA

Born 1984

The anti-trend, painterly style of Mark Andy Garcia serve to impart emotional honesty to paintings that operate like entries in journals. His various one-man shows since 2008 have detailed his life as an overseas contract worker in Saudi Arabia, laid bare his emotional anguish over the passing of his father, and operated as keepsakes of memories of his daily life.

These bring out various intense transformative experiences and also more ordinary, blissful moments. His approach towards painting has something of a child-like sincerity to it, charged with an undercurrent of religious intensity that churns both his content and brushwork, whether for lighter or darker autobiographical periods, and to portray joy or despair. Garcia graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Advertising) from the Technological University of The Philippines, Manila, in 2005. He is also the recipient of many awards such as the Grand Prize for Art Petron, the National Student Art Competition (Watercolor Category) and the Juror's Choice Award of Excellence, Philippine Art Awards National.