Tengo una vista al mar desde el balcón
[I have a sea view from the balcony]
Desayuno en la cama, ¿por qué no?
[I eat breakfast in the bed, why not?]
Tengo un closet full de Christian Dior
[I have a closet full of Christian Dior]
Obras de Picasso y hasta de Van Gogh]
[Art by Picasso and even by Van Gogh].

Tantos autos y diamantes
[So many cars and diamonds]
Avión con mi nombre adelante
[Plane with my name on it]
Todo lo que tengo solo tiene precio si
[Everything I have only has a price if]
Lo comparto junto a ti
[I share it with you].

—Pa' ti, Jennifer Lopez x Maluma.

Read more

‘Snow White shall die,’ the Wicked Queen cried, ‘even if it costs my life.’

She slithered to a secret room, where no soul was allowed, and there she made a poison apple, white on the inside, red on the outside. She painted her face with alabaster greasepaint, rouged her hollow cheeks with berries from the forest floor, and dressed herself up as a fruit farmer’s wife. She climbed seven frosted mountains and crossed seven frozen lakes before finding the place where Snow White hid from her—a humble cottage far from the castle in which she born (for the girl was a princess and the Wicked Queen her evil stepmother)—and knocked upon its dainty door.

‘Come see my wares,’ she sang with winsome charm, ‘White Winter Pearmain, quite plump and ripe, picked fresh today for baking and eating!’

Snow White did not open the door, but rather the window, and only a crack. ‘I cannot let you in,’ she said. ‘Alas, the seven dwarfs forbade me…’

‘No matter, my child’ replied the Queen, careful to disguise her vo…

Read more

This expressionist piece poses more questions than it answers, demanding visceral engagement with the cobalt moonlit landscape and its oppositional occupants—one infinitesimal, one monumental, one light as a feather, one heavy as the earth itself. Replete with symbolism, the work wordlessly encourages the viewer to dive into its quiet depths, inviting investigation, rewarding contemplation.

Doubtless the most arresting aspect of this painting is the enormous yellow face, red flowers blooming at its base, swaying in either celebration or commiseration. Imposing yet benign, it seems to smile at the small white figure hurtling down into the choppy blue water below. But its black eye is sightless, empty and blind. It stares, but does not see.

The sky surrounds the moon but does not touch it, cannot swallow it. It is connected to the figure, and the figure is sacred, untouchable, ineffable. And so the sky rebels. It swirls and turns upon itself, calm from a distance, chaotic up close. The br…

Read more

Lesson 01: Sexual Orientation

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t come out. When I realised what I was—what I am—I thought I was obligated to tell everyone about it. Which I proceeded to do in spectacularly embarrassing fashion. I outed myself to all my colleagues at the office Christmas party. To my sister on the way home from the cineplex, in a tone so grave she thought I was breaking the news of a terminal illness. To an old school friend too loudly in an empty arcade, my ‘I’m gay!’ echoing over the sound of Space Invaders and a Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine until it reverberated back to me—then beyond me, around the corner where my mom was waiting by the air hockey tables.

We played a painful game that night, new to the arcade: Never Have I Ever.

I had. I still do.

Lesson 02: Genetic Variation

My sister is my twin, separated by six years but identical nonetheless. Except where it counts, where it matters. Valentine, I call her, but only in a whisper, beneath my breath, for that is her secret name, the name that delineates her virtue, her compassion, her empathy, her morality. Valentine is the name of Andrew Wiggin’s wise and noble sister in Orson Scott Card’s novel, Ender’s Game. I am Andrew in real life, while my sister is Valentine only in my mind.

I should stop now. But then I would end on a lie. For I am not really Andrew—the protagonist-hero, but rather Peter, his megalomaniacal, squirrel-skinning sibling, the one who would rule not only the world, but all the worlds, the one who believes the ends justify the means, the one who is not merely immoral, but amoral, even though he ultimately unites all humanity as its Hegemon.

This, too, is a lie. In truth I am Andrew and Peter, two faces of a spinning coin that costs those who hold it dearly. I cannot reconcile the twin aspects of my identity for they are irreconcilable. I will always be Andrew—Ender—xenocide bringer and Speaker for the Dead, just as I will forever be Peter, the sadist and the diplomat.

Valentine, I love you. Sister, forgive me.

Lesson 03: Gastrointestinal Disorders

Some people sweat when they get nervous. Others stutter and shake, splutter and quake. A few even throw up. Me, I do that other thing. The thing deers do when pursued by a predator, voiding dung from their bowels like ballast from a scudding ship.

Unfortunately for me, what triggers my anxiety and its debilitating, peristaltic physical response is something I strenuously attempt to avoid, but can never entirely eliminate.

Other human beings.

Sometimes I wished that a plague would come and decimate life on earth, as it did in the days of the dinosaurs, giving some other species a shot at ruling the planet whose bounty we have polluted, whose riches we have plundered, denying our children’s children their inheritance.

It surprised me when the plague I prayed for finally arrived.

Lesson 04: Epidemiology

When COVID came, I welcomed it like an old friend, embraced it like a lover. I wrapped myself up in the comforting anonymity it afforded: an oversized face mask; a branded black baseball cap I liked to think made my bookish face look thuggish; and wraparound sunglasses to shade my eyes, to shield my soul, to protect me from the contemptuous, condescending, condemnatory gazes of those who would judge me for my identity, my amorality, my anxiety and my misanthropy.

The pandemic is over. Life is back to normal.

But I still wear a mask.

Read more

28 years ago, in 1995, a Coke can spoke to an artist on the street. ‘Die, OK,’ it said from its spot in the gutter, in a tone as flat as its condition. Was this a statement or a demand? The artist did not know. But he knew what it was to be broken, to be crushed, and so he picked it up and put it in his pocket.

38 years ago, in 1985, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol collaborated on a series of paintings fusing capitalism and primitivism, culture and counterculture, sterility and prolixity. The resulting works juxtaposed Warhol's meticulous, machinelike screen printing with Basquiat’s riotous, gritty graffiti, none more so than ‘Bananas’ and ‘Untitled (General Electric II)'.

Nineteen ninety-five. Nineteen eighty-five. 28 years ago. 38 years ago. A man with a coke can. Two men and their bananas. What are we to make of it? The artist wondered, too. But he did not act. Failed to solve the riddle.

Three decades later, when the young man was no longer young, he finally found the answer, fa…

Read more

How does it feel to lose the one you love, to be a prisoner of the heart, to ache without the hope of healing? These are the themes of ‘Love, Lost’, a deeply human, personal example of narrative Neo-expressionism that encourages exploration and repays close attention.

The genesis of this piece spans 15 years. It begins with a wedding invitation adorned with a pink paper leaf. That delicate tissue survived all this time to become the artist’s personal proxy, exhaled, expelled, untethered, abandoned: drifting away off the edge of the canvas.

That is the story of the left, the departed, the frayed and discarded.

On the right is a male figure, filling much of the frame, naked and alone. Lost in reverie, his eyes are closed; he cannot see what he has lost.

Or perhaps he does not want to.

The rosebud in the figure’s open heart was once wedded to the leaf, the two glued together, seemingly inseparable, but is displayed here on its own, exposed.

The heart knows what the head denies.

SECRETS AND LINES

Read more

This special edition of ‘Articulating Art’ features immersive audio narration.

Read more

It all begins with the perfect bean. Arabica, of course. Softer and sweeter than rich-but-bitter robusta, with fragrant berry tones that tantalise the senses, it must be grown at a specific altitude, on accommodating soil, in a temperate climate that nurtures, never threatens. From Kenya and Colombia to the peaks of Costa Rica, the mountain is the bean’s best friend.

The right grind is essential. Not too coarse, nor pulverised. Not too fast, or all that effort will be lost, the coffee scorched, unusable. Time must be taken, and effort applied. Then, and only then, can you spread the coffee on the canvas, mix it into paint. Acrylic is ideal for crema. Emulsion gives body, dimension, and depth. You may choose to add sugar; the artist refrained.

The Coffee Lovers is a piece that exists only once, only now. It cannot be copied. It will never be remade. This is because it was poured, not painted, brewed, not produced. Comprising 3,673 individual flecks of espresso—1,189 of them hardened by heat into glossy beads of black enamel—it was extracted over the course of a year, drip by painstaking drip. The work is open to digestion, but duplication is impossible.

The Artwork Up Close

Scratch and sniff. Touch and taste. Coffee will insinuate itself into your sinuses, your soft palate, the back of your throat, the tip of your tongue. This is the artist’s seal of authenticity, the artwork’s undeniable provenance. Step back, sit down, and drink it in.

What do we see? Two lovers, abstracted. One appears feminine, its upturned visage expectant, adoring, the other quite masculine, its long face a mask, ambivalent and atavistic. The outline of a large white heart hovers between them like the froth atop a cappuccino, its atrium a piebald horse with albatross wings. Other creatures can be seen at the edges of the canvas, from crabs to bluebirds denuded of their colors.

The figures themselves demand our attention. The leftmost lover, its head and neck precarious but beautiful, is a riot of red and yellow acrylic, its abdomen undulating, its paper heart exposed, its hair a cacophony of syncopated mark making. The form on the right is no less arresting: its tubular torso, blackened and abrasive, lays waste to the canvas like a river of lava. Pitted by craters, the orange skin is serpentine. There is a suggestion of an eye, as yellow as its paramour's heart. An orange curve describes the mouth. But it is barely there at all.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Gomorrah

Turn right. Look left. And see the secret of this piece, hidden in plain sight. Before it was espresso, this work was something else: Adam and Eve at the end of their Eden. The sweep of raw scarlet is clearly Eve’s hair, her face a blank space, the outline of her elephantine body still visible, still readable. The yellow streak is Adam’s mane, his head turned away from us, his nose and eye in profile. Other lovers from another story, lost to thick layers of coffee and time.