Boston street desire

On the second floor of the Boston Gallery at the corner of Boston and Lantana streets in Cubao, there are nine paintings in the first one-woman show of Marika Constantino, entitled “Desiderata,” the different faces of desire that go beyond surface gloss and oil on canvas, the unbearable lightness of solitude and longing.

The gallery itself is a bit hard to find, perhaps much like the artists who exhibit here, evasive as eels. The paintings, which can be viewed after climbing up a short winding staircase, have strong references in literature showing the artist’s literary bent: Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, Rainier Maria Rilke, and the obscure author of the popular treatise of another calmer time from which the show takes its title.

The six medium-sized panels, sort of like a triptych times two, representing varied versions of a kiss-take off from the Plath poem where the persona warns someone not to trick her with a kiss.

Three are done in the separate primary colors, and occupy the upper half, while the three others below offer further gradations of a kiss that dance between the lurid and the lyrical, the fine line separating the profane and the profound.

“Kismet,” “Kiskis,” “Kisintahan” and the others would not be out of place in the lobby of a boutique hotel, say maybe in Singapore, where the artist had exhibited earlier this year.

“Si Tu Me Olvidas” is based on a poem by Neruda, translated as “If You Should Forget Me,” and has the Chilean Nobel prizewinner at the height of his powers. It is vintage Neruda, possibly from Twenty Love Songs and One Ode of Desperation or even, for that matter, “The Book of Vagaries,” and if one were so lucky to have attended the opening night at Boston, there was a tape playing where a reader recited the poem, transporting the listener to Il Postino and the shores of Latin Americana.

The subject of the painting can either be a young woman or a young man, the sex rather ambiguous, which the painter says is meant to give free rein to the viewer’s imagination and perception of the nude figure in repose, in between the sheets that, if one looks closely enough searching for the heart shape that is like Marika’s trademark a la Larry Alcala’s caricature, resemble running water.

Above the nude an almost indiscernible sheen peeks through the midnight blue, like hidden flashes of lightning.

Another large painting of consequence is “Most difficult of all our tasks,” taken from a line from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, a must-read for all aspiring poets, young or old, just as the painting is a must-see for all aspiring painters, of any generation, as it is a emblematic representation of lovers in a quiet embrace, nearly tarot-like, the curves of their bodies a tantric brown.

Marika’s use of color, though not conservative, here steers clear of golpe de gulat or of being sensational for its own sake. The tones are subdued, making the work faithful to the spirit of Rilke’s letters, and in turn remind us of the German poet’s sonnets to Orpheus and Duino elegies, and one of our favorite first lines: “Lord, it is time.”

“The most difficult of tasks” then is not so much painting as prayer, and the viewer a witness to sensual communion, or is it consensual union of the sexes. If the body is for sex, so is it the temple of the spirit, and rarely do the twain meet except in the most roundabout of arcs.

We learned that the painting was the last Marika finished for the exhibit, and aside from a reading of Rilke’s letter, could also be accompanied by John Coltrane’s endless loop of ballads, you could hear a pin drop through the silence of years.

Finally the title painting, occupying a corner of its own like an icon or mirror, referencing the sermon of the old days. A woman’s torso focusing on the breasts. Almost asked if it was a self-portrait but luckily thought better than to sound like a booby, a booby trap in Boston Gallery.

Go placidly, because there is no other way to go; avoid the loud and lousy vexations; child of the universe, no less than the moon and stars. There’s a poster of “Desiderata” in the ancestral house, between the dead patriarch’s room and the pink bathroom, in the south wing, which he might have taken a glance at during his last days.

Latin for “Desire,” which is the title of a Bob Dylan album circa 1976, when he was with the Rolling Thunder Revue that featured a gypsy violinist Scarlet Rivera, and had songs like Oh Sister, Hurricane, One More Cup of Coffee and Isis.

No wonder Tence Ruiz, who wrote the poem in the exhibit program, attended the opening wearing a hat much like Dylan’s on the cover of “Desire,” one more light beer before I go/ to the valley below.

Incidentally a few steps down the inspiral staircase, on the first floor of the gallery, is Neil Manalo’s own one-man show “Punyagi,” which again shows him in fine carnivalesque form. Marika says Neil is having another show in Singapore early next year.

As Marika should too, in gallery or boutique hotel, say the Hotel New Majestic. Been a long time coming, but she’s here or there, sort of a late bloomer. And like most great art, “Desiderata” can make you change your view of the not so placid world. Just as on the second floor of a gallery in Boston corner Lantana, a stone’s throw away from Betty Go-Belmonte Street, one afternoon in November you could almost see up to the ends of the earth.

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“Desiderata,” which like “Punyagi” is co-sponsored by Britania Art Projects, runs through Dec. 9.