Collaboration in painting has always remained one of the form’s more elusive enterprises. Seldom do we see successful attempts in the merging of two distinctive styles which makes us sometimes susceptible to dismiss them as elaborate acts. Indeed, the idea of collaboration is riddled with challenging considerations that affect the project’s outcome, and the current situation has made it even more difficult to imagine the kind of cooperation it demands amid social distancing. Albeit these conditions, we have seen how most collaborative projects flourished during this crisis and thrived through novel approaches, especially in online and electronic platforms, proving that, more than ever, synergic responses are extremely beneficial to communities during times of uncertainty.

In painting, everything becomes even more challenging. But it can also be said that in the heart of all artistic collaborations, whether small or large-scale, is the initial exchange between two respondents: the primal dialogue—the potential space for mutuality that make the enterprise attainable.

Such mutuality has made the collaborative exhibition of Mariano Ching and Louie Cordero possible. Venturing into their second collaboration of works for an exhibition, their approach is the kind which is built, quite literally, from the toll of exchanges.  

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In a designated lot in a town in Laguna, Cordero and Ching would meet during certain intervals to swap their paintings. This point is the middle point, as both artists have relocated outside their original roots in Metro Manila where they first met as students. This parking lot—this point of exchange, being the median of each artist's newfound homes in their respective provinces, is approximately the same distance both have to travel during the lifting of lockdown. And it could be said, that this act, this exchange which proceeded from two origins—this meeting-in-between, this fait accompli—is evident across the surface of their canvases as both seemingly, and seamlessly, have their styles, brushstrokes, colors, and symbolisms meet in the middle. 

This series of exchanges has resulted into an exhibition called Bat Soup Painters—a two-man collaboration between Ching and Cordero who have reprised this dialogic approach to painting, transforming the canvas into a broth of connecting organisms and elements from the two artists’ distinct stock of images. Cordero’s deliquescent, and unshapely characters meet Ching’s farcical and varicolored scenes—this admixture applied into the same surface provides an intriguing affinity that seamlessly connects both worlds. 

This connection between imaginations—something which is both rare and difficult to emulate, is a product of a long friendship and a natural affinity between the two painters. When both were starting out, both were drawn to the same tastes and influences from which their initial exchange materialized: the swapping of ideas, music, comic books, and zines—and has persisted across the parallel worlds brought upon by the lockdown, where both artists continued to share and swap ideas on how to get by. From this premise, collaboration seems not only apt but necessary.

The condition of painting, measured by imagination and innovation, as well as the application of the artist’s techniques, becomes more nuanced and conscientious during collaboration as both artists try to study, anticipate, and give room for each other’s processes and responses. With this attempt, Cordero and Ching have defied today’s expected virtues of isolation and solipsism. To continue to connect—to only connect—is what resonates now from the partnership and cooperation forged by a dual-authored show. And behind this connection is the bond built on mutual respect, as both artists, time and again, and without hesitation, continue to express admiration for each other’s works.