'Urgent Paintings' by Trek Valdizno

For Trek Valdizno’s 25th solo exhibition “Urgent Paintings,” the stimulus comes from making images out of “cotton-like buttons.”

The preamble to this new body of work in contrast to the complexity of what the artist achieves cannot be any simpler or more banal, making it appear that he is quick to grab any motif if only to prod and probe his materials.

Much more than a materialist, Valdizno is not merely content attributing adjectives to paint. Paint must skid, slide, fatten, thin, glisten, fly, chatter, quiver, tumble, soften, harden, laugh, and cry. His act of drawing is a vehicle to infuse paint with verbs that make it live and breathe as if human.

More innocently than idealistically, Valdizno allows his gestures to do everything to pigment creating a picture more delicious than candy. He waits patiently till the last minute for a crucial starting point that will allow him to draw for hours and days on end, spewing works by the hundreds, unapologetic of his abstractions done over and over again. He will even deliver his paintings wet. It is the only thing he can imagine doing very urgently.

“Urgent Paintings” is on view until Jan. 9 at Artis Corpus Gallery, 303 Haig St., Mandaluyong City.

Conversations with the artist and presentation of the video-catalogue by exhibition curator Sandra Palomar will be held on Jan. 8, 2009.

For inquiries, call 717-4619.