Jayson Oliveria
Find X
30 January – 15 February 2007

Mag:net Gallery Katipunan

Problems do come with their own solutions.  A painting’s problems, in more ways than one, give birth to another condition or state of perception. Cezanne battling with linear perspectives presaged a diminishing reliance on sacred iconography – rendering painting itself as its own icon, but problematic nonetheless in presupposing perfect plastic objectivity over “classical beatific truth”. Picasso thence, brutally admonished beauty to be in the way of his search for a picture that works.  By and how it shall and will be is a relentlessly daunting task for painting to have been tackling in its reincarnations, revisions, remissions and provisions. Hence, it is already a given for painting, with its burdensome history to be commanded on its feet when plagued by doubt or sullied from within by sluggish complacency.  

In Jayson Oliveria’s latest exhibit Find X opening at the Mag:net on the 30th of January the problems of painting are presupposed to be the daunting factors resulting into works exhibited herein. Most of the canvases are big, recycled panels from previous shows, their subsequent layers of paints seeping through, all overlaid by piles upon piles of more oil paint, straight from the tube, briskly applied by broad brushes, in different degrees of caking and crusting, a la prima at its most primitive. Undeniably they’re all overworked – it’s a baffling mess of pure pigments, of roughly discernible figures drawn in outline traced and googled from porn sites, from personal blogs, from Photoshopping pranksters, from Math tutorials, from coloring books, from art history, from movie scenes, from news feeds, from just about anywhere.  

Oliveria likens this multiple layering of texture, strokes and images to scraps of papers on which solutions to math problems are written down, the one final answer being filled in from a set of multiple choice questionnaires. Oftentimes, he would just invent solutions for them instead of just submitting a blank sheet of paper. In a way this also acts as a bluff for being clueless about it. With the paintings, it seems that more problems supersede the assumed solutions, no one definite answer comes out.  The end result though, is still painting, albeit a difficult one, but which he is extra pleased with doing and to present to peers as a challenge, another brain teaser to be cracked. 

Initially it may seem that Oliveria deliberates on devaluing painting itself, unlearning formulas and styles and borrowing elements from other artists’ works. For instance, in one large diptych where a pair of stanchions stands guard at the middle where an oval mirror with 8 small round mirrors formed into a flower glued on top of it bridges the gap between panels – these elements are faintly reminiscent of one of Gerry Tan’s past works where he has a small realistically rendered painting of the exact same pair of stanchion guarding the painting.  However this may just be purely coincidental, nonetheless it is Oliveria’s way of taking these elements into lesser known paths which consequently leads him onto another dilemma which would involve the viewer, nay confront the viewer as with his use of the mirror. (Interestingly, this mirror is somehow meant to boomerang a hundred times the opaque self-reflexivity of Gerry Tan’s version/ work.) The text on the mirror : “I don’t understand the vast majority of critical thinking”1, echoes the apprehension in viewing said work, moreover in what Oliveria has initially set for this particular painting. But the inclusion of text in a painting, is something he considers as an easy and cheap trick to get away with a problem, it gives way too much, or it generalizes the whole picture into one statement unto itself, invariably tending to over interpretation, or worse to over simplification. But does incorporating text in a work meant to save it from failure?  Oliveria states that they didn’t fail for he doesn’t believe in failures, they just didn’t make it through, or that they just have pending unreconciled loose ends. Otherwise, they will all just be a waste.  
 
The motif of scrambling for answers or attempts at focusing on a recognizable view abound in most works (e.g. cartoon eyes, trick upside down figures, targets) particularly in one smaller-sized blackened canvas where it previously contained a portrait of world renowned art detective Harold Smith who died while searching for a stolen Vermeer painting, his face ironically is very disfigured, his nose a mere prosthetic which constantly falls off. A lackadaisically painted slim wooden frame intersecting through this painting parallels this art historical mishap. From among this smaller group of paintings is another which has the text : FEELING LOST THIS IS YOUR MAP thinly painted over a brush-combed surface as that of a Gerard Richter.  

This searching for, finding for so-called X, are also determined by two practical givens,  – one is, the given space he has to work with, meaning his studio which by its constrained size doesn’t allow for a panoramic view of his otherwise huge works; secondly, the time, which actually delimits if and when he can stop working on a particular piece.  How all these works would fit together in the gallery is but another riddle.  

And yet again Oliveria’s exhibit flyer, himself pictured as a buffoon with a pencil and a cigarette stub stuck in each nostril need no more explanation for this whole show other than this : “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” (which is a found inscription on a white rubber snake slithering through yet another problematic painting of his.) 

Painting, the proverbial apple, foils them all.  

Finding X will have its opening cocktails at 6:30 PM Wednesday. This will coincide with a sound performance by Pow Martinez and Sharam Kiyoumarsi.  

Finding X will be on view until the 15th of February.  

Mag:net is at  Agcor Building, 335 Katipunan Ave, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. For Inquiry please call 9293191 (Flor) or email magnetcafekatips@yahoo.com.ph or visit www.magnet.com.ph