Working in a bike shop, Mark Garduque has dreamed of one day making objects out of scraps of metal and motorcycle parts. As a mechanic for almost twenty years, his vision has been shaped by his familiarity with the gears and pieces that he had worked on while fixing and customizing vintage motorbikes throughout his career. As a craftsman in every sense of the word, he does it with great passion and with unrelenting attention
to detail—and these are carried over in his processes and ideas toward his art: functional and repurposed objects.

The intricacies of his design are matched by the precision of their moving parts. Rotating tables, lamp stands, and desk ornaments that resemble animals—these are all made of repurposed parts: steel bike chains, ball bearings, and cylinders are welded together to achieve a structure that is almost baroque-inspired, in the way these parts coalesce through their complex patterns. The composition of cogs, metal discs, and wheels exude an organic quality within them, contrasting the rigidity of steel.

Garduque, in his many years of working as a fabricator, had his ideas for making sculpture germinate from one simple gesture: to store the unused and extracted pieces into a box until they can be recycled into ‘art.’ They came together slowly and through careful progression. And the dream slowly materialized each passing day, each accumulation of different withdrawn parts, to find their way into his vision. That’s why the box of assorted, unwanted parts fittingly gained the label as the “Pangarap Box.”

A customized vintage motorcycle also sits in the middle of the gallery as an indication of the worker-as-craftsman, who later would also bear the possibility of the craftsman-turned-artist. This particular machine turned sculpture is also an indicator for the newfound Filipino culture where in most cases the growing obsession for such design and utility is evident in almost every region.
At the core of its meaning, Mark Garduque’s first exhibition, Pangarap Box, is inspiring in every sense of its conception. Here, we can find a true example of found art. Found in the way that his materials and medium were once lost from its original context and are now given new existence. It calls for the invigorating notion of renewal and repurposing. And the mechanic, craftsman, turned artist brings our attention to the manifestations of dreaming into being.