Jayson Oliveria
Life Expectancies
2009 March 7 – April 8
Mag:net Katipunan
Douglas Huebler’s blunt pronouncement is a double-edged sword - “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add anymore.” On the first reading, it completely dispenses with the necessity for producing anything more as the source, the world, is amply equipped with it already. The second reading begs for any of those objects to be ultimately framed and transubstantiated from generic utility to an object of wonderment and sublimity by the mere arbitrary choice of the artist, still practically useless just the same. Manzoni encompasses that pronouncement with an iron pedestal for the whole world itself, a cubic Atlas bearing the conceit of such pronouncement, the finality of all possible propositions for a subject. More than ever, this earth is mapped by images of itself, of its whole and of its infinite parts. From within and beyond the bounds of its heavens, a camera is propped to document itself, an ubiquitous eye on its people, its landscapes, its skies, its objects, its creatures; a self-awareness made more apparent by the multiplicity of its pictures, an awareness motivated by its fear of its own utter annihilation.
Life Magazine thrived on such goal to offer its readers an omnibus of such images, but with a blithe eye for their certain brand of photo-journalism, as their manifesto used to attest – “We wish to have some fun in this paper... We shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world... We shall have something to say about religion, about politics, fashion, society, literature, the stage, the stock exchange, and the police station…” This all the more makes them perfect fodder for Jayson Oliveria’s visual puns and oblique maneuvers that betwixt meaning and metaphor into a crushing punch line, devious and obvious at the same time. This as to be gleaned from his latest exhibit entitled Life Expectancies opening at Mag:net Katipunan on the 7th of March.
These scavenged images, Googled once again and printed directly on primed canvas, are minimally intervened by Oliveria by combing over, smearing, dabbing paint on the pictures’ edges or on some of its parts; in others an outline image of a bawdy reversible cartoon is drawn over with various colored pigments. He terms these interventions as enhancements, something devised as not to detract from what the picture is, but to amplify rather their generic iconicity, centered and underscored by the white margins or “leave-outs” around them. This as seen in one of the images where Oliveria scattered more dots on a picture of a man holding a bored through baseball bat; or in another where the debris of an explosion is multiplied and flicked on to the edge of the canvas which has been roughly stained by a rather appalling magenta.
There is the over-all datedness in the images that Oliveria used, being mostly culled from an age that has just come out of the ruins of past world wars and embracing all the novelty of an idealized life jumpstarted by a renewed and accelerated industrialization.[1] These pictures act like pictograms in typifying what they represent – as a piece of ham bone would look like, as a sliced loaf of bread with jam would look like, or a bobbysoxer’s shoes would look like, or even a horribly decaying teeth would look like – didactic, common, nonspecific, almost utilitarian as an assembly line item – all rather appealing qualities for its very dissection and further manipulation for Oliveria. The logo of Life magazine, intact and conspicuous at the bottom of each image however stresses the incongruity of the image with what the trademark name would usually imply, connote or denote.
Oliveria’s manipulations of such images are seeming extensions of the shelf-life of these images whose near obsolescence marks both their datedness and clinical generalness. Art’s intrusion beholds them longer for scrutiny and further evaluation. But does such an attempt foil or rather affirm the verity of the adage Ars longa, vita brevis (art is long, life is short)? But for how long is the art good for when art itself is and experienced as a picture imaged from among the dozen images available anywhere now?
(This as exemplified by a towering spindly network of surveillance cameras crafted from cardboard cylinders and milk cartons, a proxy prop or decoy for the actual thing.)
If pictures are to be deemed as approximations of actual things, and if art serves that same function when it exists as an actual thing by itself, do these corollaries chew on each other’s premise and proceed to make muck off them by their infinite referencing?
It might be reassuring to be reminded from time to time that the base of the world has edges after all for the other stuff that tire of being beholden to fall off from and to let life run off the frame.
Life Expectancies will have its opening cocktails on the 7th of March at 6PM. This will be followed by band performances from LOC and Trojan Whores at 9:30PM.
The exhibit will be on view until the 8th of April 2008.
___________________________
[1] The end of the 1940s thru the 1950s, also the heyday of Life Magazine. Most of these images are unpublished material and are downloadable as a public domain source through Google.
Life Expectancies
2009 March 7 – April 8
Mag:net Katipunan
Douglas Huebler’s blunt pronouncement is a double-edged sword - “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add anymore.” On the first reading, it completely dispenses with the necessity for producing anything more as the source, the world, is amply equipped with it already. The second reading begs for any of those objects to be ultimately framed and transubstantiated from generic utility to an object of wonderment and sublimity by the mere arbitrary choice of the artist, still practically useless just the same. Manzoni encompasses that pronouncement with an iron pedestal for the whole world itself, a cubic Atlas bearing the conceit of such pronouncement, the finality of all possible propositions for a subject. More than ever, this earth is mapped by images of itself, of its whole and of its infinite parts. From within and beyond the bounds of its heavens, a camera is propped to document itself, an ubiquitous eye on its people, its landscapes, its skies, its objects, its creatures; a self-awareness made more apparent by the multiplicity of its pictures, an awareness motivated by its fear of its own utter annihilation.
Life Magazine thrived on such goal to offer its readers an omnibus of such images, but with a blithe eye for their certain brand of photo-journalism, as their manifesto used to attest – “We wish to have some fun in this paper... We shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world... We shall have something to say about religion, about politics, fashion, society, literature, the stage, the stock exchange, and the police station…” This all the more makes them perfect fodder for Jayson Oliveria’s visual puns and oblique maneuvers that betwixt meaning and metaphor into a crushing punch line, devious and obvious at the same time. This as to be gleaned from his latest exhibit entitled Life Expectancies opening at Mag:net Katipunan on the 7th of March.
These scavenged images, Googled once again and printed directly on primed canvas, are minimally intervened by Oliveria by combing over, smearing, dabbing paint on the pictures’ edges or on some of its parts; in others an outline image of a bawdy reversible cartoon is drawn over with various colored pigments. He terms these interventions as enhancements, something devised as not to detract from what the picture is, but to amplify rather their generic iconicity, centered and underscored by the white margins or “leave-outs” around them. This as seen in one of the images where Oliveria scattered more dots on a picture of a man holding a bored through baseball bat; or in another where the debris of an explosion is multiplied and flicked on to the edge of the canvas which has been roughly stained by a rather appalling magenta.
There is the over-all datedness in the images that Oliveria used, being mostly culled from an age that has just come out of the ruins of past world wars and embracing all the novelty of an idealized life jumpstarted by a renewed and accelerated industrialization.[1] These pictures act like pictograms in typifying what they represent – as a piece of ham bone would look like, as a sliced loaf of bread with jam would look like, or a bobbysoxer’s shoes would look like, or even a horribly decaying teeth would look like – didactic, common, nonspecific, almost utilitarian as an assembly line item – all rather appealing qualities for its very dissection and further manipulation for Oliveria. The logo of Life magazine, intact and conspicuous at the bottom of each image however stresses the incongruity of the image with what the trademark name would usually imply, connote or denote.
Oliveria’s manipulations of such images are seeming extensions of the shelf-life of these images whose near obsolescence marks both their datedness and clinical generalness. Art’s intrusion beholds them longer for scrutiny and further evaluation. But does such an attempt foil or rather affirm the verity of the adage Ars longa, vita brevis (art is long, life is short)? But for how long is the art good for when art itself is and experienced as a picture imaged from among the dozen images available anywhere now?
(This as exemplified by a towering spindly network of surveillance cameras crafted from cardboard cylinders and milk cartons, a proxy prop or decoy for the actual thing.)
If pictures are to be deemed as approximations of actual things, and if art serves that same function when it exists as an actual thing by itself, do these corollaries chew on each other’s premise and proceed to make muck off them by their infinite referencing?
It might be reassuring to be reminded from time to time that the base of the world has edges after all for the other stuff that tire of being beholden to fall off from and to let life run off the frame.
Life Expectancies will have its opening cocktails on the 7th of March at 6PM. This will be followed by band performances from LOC and Trojan Whores at 9:30PM.
The exhibit will be on view until the 8th of April 2008.
___________________________
[1] The end of the 1940s thru the 1950s, also the heyday of Life Magazine. Most of these images are unpublished material and are downloadable as a public domain source through Google.
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