Theater of the Imagination

Each sculpture by Gabriel Barredo is a striking bravura performance of the artist’s hyperactive and surreal imagination, obsessive craftsmanship, and a host of unlikely media—from carved rubber, to bed springs, to shoe polish locks. And unlike his works, the reason why he does what he does is surprisingly simple.

By Tara FT Sering
Photographs by Nicky Sering

Detail of Gabriel Barredo's "Setting Angels Free"

Theater of the Imagination

You can tell by the work that Gabriel Barredo produces that he’s not exactly one to do anything half-baked. His own home, in a quiet suburb south of Manila, is the street’s main attraction with its frontage of lush trees and a curtain of long, slim vines reminiscent of those found in old estates, intricate wrought-iron gates and window rails, and sculpted human figures cast in all white hanging overhead like floating sentries. The general look is difficult to encapsulate tidily into a particular architectural or design style, and this is perhaps the goal of the whole exercise. This is exactly the kind of house that makes you do a double take.

In life and home, as in his art, Barredo is relentless in his pursuit of details and the results they produce when assembled, first in his artist’s mind, then in his studio. “I don’t like things that are flat,” Barredo says, albeit uncertainly, because the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t really know of another way of doing things.

“This changes all the time. As soon as I get tired of it, I move things around,” he says, referring to the setup in his living room. It’s hard to tell what the centerpiece of the high-ceilinged room is—one wall has an almost ceiling to floor drapery of tiny plastic toy babies strung together, another has cast a human figure with an large eye for a head and backdrop of hundreds of Kiwi shoe polish locks glued together and glossed over with a metallic finish. At the center of the room is a large square glass tabletop and a spread of canapés, whipped up by Barredo himself, and a tray of small cakes. Barredo’s attention to detail extends to even the otherwise mundane activity of late afternoon refreshments.

Fresh from a successful one-month solo show at the Soka Art Center in Beijing two weeks before the Olympics—where he curated his own show and covered the entire art space with velvet fabric to serve as backdrop to his pieces—Barredo has returned to the rhythm of his home, which he confesses he hardly ever leaves except when he drives to a favorite beachside retreat in Batangas. “I work at an even pace because I don’t like rushing a piece,” he says. “I normally only schedule shows every three years so I can take my time.” The last show he put together, entitled [IN] VISIBLE was at the Ayala Museum in 2005.

His art does take a lot of time and effort. Of his process, he says, “I put something together, and when I see that it’s not quite what I intended it to be, or that it can become something better or something else entire, I take it apart and start over.”