JOLOGS for Art Dubai 2019 in collab with 856G Gallery (PH)

JOLOGS

Kristoffer Ardeña

856G Gallery / Mandaue (PH)

Jologs is super Filipino! It is derivative culture, however, it is aware of itself and because of this awareness it understands its cultural position versus other forms of derivative culture like Western appropriation in Asia.

Jologs is a counter against homogeneity. Jologs is self-aware. Jologs is adaptive re-use.

Jologs is about being porous, like an archipelago. Jologs and other archipelagic forms of culture perform adaptive re-use. Jologs celebrates permeability. Jologs is about being practical, about survival.

Permeability, hybridity embedded within Jologs is a sort of chaos with high dimensionality. It stands apart from modern Post Colonial thought (flat) because it is non reactionary to prior circumstance, rather it owns and coopts whatever it sees fit instead of standing in opposition it just swallows.

The artworks presented by Kris embodies this idea in regards to direct inspiration of some of the pieces, retaso, the rugs and cloth made of waste fabrics and materials that you can find at wet markets, on the street, almost everywhere. Other references include contemporary graphic expression in the Philippines. House paints that generate their own local color palettes.

When we think about Jologs it makes us think about a term recently discovered, “Majority World”. New terminology stepping away from colonial identifiers such as ‘developing’ and ‘thirds’. The concept of majority in relation to Jologs runs synonymous to filipino cultural trends such as Jejemon (language-based) and Budots (body-based) that are culturally rooted within the local framework but looked upon as a subculture or in this case since they are cultures emanating from the mass, as ‘lower’ cultures?

Our idea between 856G and Kristoffer Ardeña coming to ArtDubai is to embody the word, meme, lifestyle, culture, idea that is Jologs.

Ghost Painting (Cracked Category):

Woven PVC fabrics, known as tarpaulins are common in both the urban and rural domestic everyday in Philippine life. It’s main use is to announce birthdays, funerals, weddings, sell products and services or as as political tool for elections and and even religious during religious events. Once this short lived purpose, these tarpaulins, finds itself a secondary purpose and is converted into sunshades for motorcycles, street vendor’s stalls, improvised shower curtains, table clothes, even as part of architecture serving as roofs or walls.

In Ghost Painting (Cracked Category): 555 Sardines and Ghost Paintings (Cracked Category): HQO Rice Cooker, Ardeña uses two very common components of Filipino material culture -the brand of sardines 555 and a rice cooker, part of every household both in the country and within Filipinos in diaspora. These are printed on tarpaulin and then interwoven into the painted geometric patterns. The colors of handwoven retaso rugs typical in the Philippines, are hand painted onto the tarpaulin and then cracked, revealing parts of the underlying images leaving a subliminal understanding of the painting -neither abstract nor figurative, neither discursive nor poetic but permeable and always open to negotiation.

In the other Ghost Painting (Cracked Category), Ardeña paints thin dark layers of color on to katrina fabric, commonly used in the Philippines as uniforms, bedsheets or curtains. Upon scoring lines that end up conjuring architectural structures, he then subjects it to a cracking process that further reveal, much like the tarpaulin paintings, geometric patterns printed on the fabric.

For this series Ardeña utilizes mainly uses industrial house paints specifically formulated for the tropics especially a paint called elastomeric paint which is specially formulated for outdoor use that protects the buildings from the constant rain, high temperatures and humidity of the tropics.

These Cracked Paintings are characteristically highly decorative. The viewers are lost in the intricate patterns and colors of the surface that conceal yet reveal the subject matter.

Ghost Painting (Cracked Category): HQE Rice Cooker Acrylic on woven PVC fabric

242x212 cms

2019

detail of the painting

image of the retaso rug that pattern of the painting is based on

image of the packaging design the painting is based on

Ghost Painting (Cracked Category): 555 Sardines Acrylic on woven PVC fabric

237x210 cms

2019

detail of the painting

image of the retaso rug that pattern of the painting is based on

image of the packaging design the painting is based on

Ghost Painting (Cracked Category): (painting will incorporate the name of the first collector) Acrylic on fabric

240x160 cms

2016

NOTE: painting can be hung in any direction

Ghost Painting (Cracked Category): (painting will incorporate the name of the first collector) Acrylic on fabric

240x160 cms

2016

NOTE: painting can be hung in any direction

Ghost Painting (Invisible Category):

Ghost Painting (Invisible Category): Rolyo Pouf (version #1)

Kristoffer Ardeña in collaboration with Clark Mendoza

Painting + low seat furniture

Medium: acrylic emulsion on retaso rugs

3 pieces (8 rugs per roll) (rug: 35x56x1.5 cms) (roll: 18x30 cms diameter)

2019

In this painting, Ardeña collaborates with industrial designer Clark Mendoza on his ASEAN award-winning furniture design called Rolyo in recycled fabrics. In this series, both the act and the materiality of painting is questioned and challenged. Ardeña uses acrylic emulsion as paint rendering itself invisible when it is absorbed by the very fabric in which it is executed on. What you see is the mere structure in which the painting is applied onto, in this case, that of Mendoza’s pouf made of the retaso rugs. It further defies the notion of painting by rendering the original function of the structure intact instead of the painting simply being a decorative hanging or an object of contemplation, in this collaboration Mendoza’s furniture does not cease to become a readymade that is incorporated into painting, nor does it become the theme of the painting but there is a clear intersection collaboration between material and function.

Ardeña explores Invisible Paintings in a myriad of other existing objects and mediums -from painting invisible geometric patterns on walls and spaces furthering the discussion about graffiti and mural-making. In some instances, painting over existing works by street artists, although, supposedly invisible, allows the underlying layer to be seen and still be the visual protagonist. Other works in this series include creating sculptural assemblages that, at first glance might look like any modernist, minimalist troupe or the typical formalist or readymade installation imbued with highly riddled intellectual discourse, but, in this case Ardeña renders it superficial and places them within the context of painting.

Ghost Painting (Invisible Category): Rolyo Pouf (version #1)

Kristoer Ardeùa in collaboration with Clark Mendoza

Painting + low seat furniture

Medium: acrylic emulsion on retaso rugs

3 pieces (8 rugs per roll) (rug: 35x56x1.5 cms) (roll: 18x30 cms diameter)

2019

Ghost Painting (Perfume Category):

Ghost Painting (Perfume Category): Still Life / Pure Black (Version #1)

Kristoffer Ardeña

Painting

Medium: perfume

Size, variable

Performed by: Clark Mendoza

Video documentation: Clark Mendoza

Props: courtesy of ARTISANA Island Crafts, Negros Island (Philippines) @artisanaphl

2019

The series started to happen based on two observations. First, that in the tropical Philippines, because of it’s high humidity, scents acquire heightened and dramatic visceral response. In the one mile-radius neighborhood where he lives in Bacolod you can find restaurants, a dog hospital, a university complex, ample street stalls at night and one of the city’s main wet market. The smell of rotten garbage, deodorant from young university male students intertwine with BBQ smoke giving way to painting a picture of the space that these scents momentarily inhabit. Thus, a street corner becomes mapped out because of the chicken inasal that is roasting on charcoal or the smell of a specific dish from a restaurant.

The second observation came from questioning how color is defined and perceived. While waiting for a flight, at the duty free store, Ardeña noticed that a few perfumes carried names of colors like Chanel Bleu or Hugo Boss Deep Red. What led the people behind the brand to define a perfume as a specific color? This capitalist strategy gives way to multiple layers of socio-cultural analysis, criticism and discussions.

Much like the Invisible Paintings, Ardeña continues to question the tradition of painting, not only it’s medium, performative aspect and formal structure, but also in terms of the genres and subject matters that it addresses, the art market and the craft itself of painting giving way to a new understanding of material realism. Perfume as painting. Painting as scent.

For Art Dubai, we find a classical academic subject matter, a still life with flower. The public is not only able to contemplate the assembled objects, but participate in painting it.

I.

Ghost Painting (Perfume Category).

Ghost Painting (Perfume Category): Still Life / Pure Black (Version #1)

Kristoffer Ardeña

Painting

Medium: perfume

Size, variable

Performed by: Clark Mendoza

Video documentation: Clark Mendoza

Props: courtesy of ARTISANA Island Crafts, Negros Island (Philippines) @artisanaphl

2019