Art, more than anything, is deeply human in its triumph and flaws. While everyone aims for perfection, what makes art compelling is how it showcases the deep, individual traits that affect every artist working today. Many Philippine artists working today have such a profound trove of influences and talent that one cannot help but marvel […]
Thea Quiachon Makes Material Art of Abstract Emotions
Our world today seems to push us towards an inevitability of a single purpose. For our society’s narrative, the goal is to find one profession to be an expert in, and to do it for as long as we are alive. But sometimes life surprises us by leading us down different roads, and for Thea Quiachon, it led her away from architecture and towards art.
Quiachon has been a working artist since the pandemic, specializing in a Neo-Classical style that evokes Grecian art and modernity within a single canvas. Her most recent exhibition, A Glimpse into the Dreamer’s Reality, showed a progression of her style, leaning into abstraction as she wills us into a journey of provocative ideas.
BluPrint interviewed Quiachon in her studio, delving deeper into her influences, inspiration, and the journey of self-discovery through art.
Changing Lanes
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Thea Quiachon believed she was on a set path towards architecture. Working as a junior architect climbing through the ranks, painting was only something she did in her spare time.
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“And then the pandemic came, and I became more focused in art,” she explained. “So even when I went back to work during the pandemic, I was still painting, and then [it] became more serious.”
She started exploring and experimenting in her stylistic forms, first submitting her work on online shows. “I submitted my portfolio to Cartellino,” she elaborated. “I did a solo online release with [them] and then I was invited to do a physical solo show with Galerie Stephanie. And I’ve been with them ever since.”
The Art in Architecture
It’s easy to see why a gallery would be enamored with Quiachon’s art: her works have a distinctive texture and structure that mixes the Classical forms of Greco-Roman art with a more impressionistic and minimalist sensibility. A distinguishing characteristic of her art are the tiny faceless figurines that exist within a spacious, almost barren background, giving her paintings a haunting feel.
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“ It’s actually a scale figure used in architectural sketches,” she explained. “ I don’t think I’ve ever told people that. You do a sketch, and every architect has their signature way of sketching. So this is mine. It became a texture when I became a painter.”
More than anything, Quiachon emphasizes the importance of texture in her pieces. She uses the impasto method, putting the mix of plaster and paint thickly with a painter’s knife, to create the stone-like textures of the figurines of her paintings.
“At first it was just like, I was painting very heavily. I used paint and I let it dry so heavy,” she said. “And then I explored more on [other] mediums.” When she first used impasto, she put her canvas near a window and was intrigued by the shadow it would cast when sunlight hit the painting.
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The way the light and shadows created additional details in the work intrigued her, further refining the technique over the course of her shows. She leaned towards those details, crafting more three-dimensional works that played with that aspect of her art.
“I used to get so frustrated because I can’t photograph it in a particular way,” she said. “It looks different here and then it looks different there. Then I just learned that that’s the beauty of it. Like texture, you put it in different places [and] every time it’s gonna look different. It’s gonna rely on the environment; I love the shadow and the light aspect.”
‘The Styles Are A Lie’
This focus on creating a coarse, three-dimensional image informs all of her process, from color to how she composes figures on the canvas.
“ If it’s texture, most probably it’s gonna be monochrome,” she said. “ Kasi I want to focus on the light and shadow. So if there’s a flat surface, I’m more likely to paint on that, to paint an image on that. It’s more focusing on the light.
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“I’ve tried other colors. I think one thing I probably won’t do is mix color on texture. I want the texture to be so raw, [that] you focus on it. Very minimal, I think. It looks minimal, but the process, not very.”
Quiachon’s stylistic signature was not intentional; it came from influences of the past, notably architecture. Quoting Le Corbusier, “The styles are a lie,” she references how her works tend to converge towards a specific stylistic point. She saw art and architecture as practices with overlapping principles, something that she feels conscious of the more she paints.
“I was in denial, but I carried the philosophies [of architecture] with me because I studied to be an architect,” she said. “So I carry it with me: the philosophies we do in architecture, I subconsciously translate it to art.”
The Influence of the Emotional Self
And yet, that formalist philosophy informing her style brings to life the conceptual ideas in her art. Much of her work is focused on exploring the inner lives of people, with her first three shows in Galerie Stephanie serving as an unofficial trilogy around that concept.
“ I like delving into the psyche of a person,” she elaborated. “You are this person every day. When you pause, there’s like a whole world inside a person. I like analyzing that. I like focusing on that. You get to know yourself more. You get to know other people more.”
A Glimpse into the Dreamer’s Reality centered around the people who inspired her, looking into what inspires people to pursue their ambitions.
“ I was thinking about dreamers. You meet people and then, I don’t know, there’s a spark when you see dreamers. You bond with them, [and] you understand them. [Maybe] you are in a different situation, but you understand the wanting to achieve a dream, whether you’re in a similar situation or not. I think I was lucky enough to meet a lot of them, people who inspire me.”
Capturing Moments
These kinds of concepts already existed as early as her first show in Galerie Stephanie, To Raise A Soul in 2022. Even then, her work had the distinctive mix of impasto and the tackling of deep inner-life subjects that she wondered about.
“To Raise A Soul was about unlearning,” Thea Quiachon disclosed. The paintings for that exhibit show a giant outline of a person, with smaller people around them going up and down the person, representing the cycle of unlearning.
“[…] Because when you unlearn something, you can’t do it in an instant, you go back to the cycle,” she said. “There are people climbing and then diving and then swimming, and then they go back and then they go back around and around. So that’s the stage of unlearning. It’s kind of a progression, those 10 pieces.”
While there’s no solid plans to follow up her unofficial trilogy, she will still be taking notes of her surroundings and what piques her curiosity, hoping that something intrigues her attention enough to center a whole exhibition around it.
“I like capturing moments,” she said. “It’s just a moment, like it’s not the entirety of the story. You capture something at that given time and then I tend to focus on it and that’s how I make my concepts. Like you pause the people on the move.”
Exploring the Unknown Future
The future of Thea Quiachon, unlike her textured paintings, is not set in stone. She said that returning to architecture is always a possibility for her in the future, but for now, she’s focused on improving her craft. The topic is never far from her mind, however: she has plans for a future exhibit that explores the convergence between the two practices.
Until then, Quiachon hopes that her works continue to connect with people in a primal way. It’s her favorite part of making art.
“ I’m very selfish in this aspect,” Quiachon said. “ I want them to see something in themselves when they look at the pieces. In a way I’m like—it’s my art and they’re observing my art, but I feel like I’m observing them in a way.
“Sometimes people would send me a message and tell me about their life. That’s always a treat. I love that part.”
Photos by Ed Simon.
Related readings: Galerie Stephanie Showcases an All-Filipina Lineup at Art Fair Tokyo
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