Godbless the Rockstars / 2010 /mixed media on photograph / 91in x 50in
Hey Idol, How you Doin' ? (series) / 2010 / painted resin / 2ft height
This show is all about excessive worship.
Not exactly true or false worship, because the word itself is subject to the relativity of its consecrated believers, and the main concern really is the parallelism between their means of adoration and divination or perhaps, the Gods that they drink the blood of.
I have always seen replicated Jesus Christ images as a stereotypical rock star representation, with his revered image of long ch...estnut hair paired with a thickish beard. The aura alone of these carved marble effigies exudes enough force to make people kneel before the image that they are trying to duplicate. This may be completely ironic, but this poses a veil of dark humor between the similarities of exalted Christian gods to rockstars that we pledge devotion and affection to, they all are, merely products of theatrics and glam-inspired makeups, with the thunder and star signs no different from the halos and thorn crowns that our sculpted idols bear and exhibit. We even tuck band posters on our walls the same way that we design them with altar pieces and Nazarene portraits which we frame in flawless gold, the hue that overflows with human weakness and seduction towards sin. Of course, this is not a statement that leads down to creating an antithesis against religion. It's only an affirmation that further questions the vain worshippers of religion itself. And to that extent, the exposed animal flesh on my main piece signifies that we are all edible to our own teeth, rounding us down to a hopeless, desperate case of self-cannibalism that would lead to our own extermination.
On the wall floats six sculpted images of Christ, adorned with a black, loose-fitting robe that makes it look like a flock of vultures from afar. Markings are engraved on its body, resembling a conjunction of images that narrate the weakness of man when faced with faith and religion. It also shows the fatality of deceitful worship and blind following to a vain repetition of beliefs. Watching the installed sculptures closely, would our faith and certitude remain even despite the fact that Jesus now, in this postmodern perspective, is artistically customized with imprints of struck animals, skulls, and other different patterns. Would we still pray to such images of a God?
This symbolically narrates the slow destruction of man's ego, the corrupted, deadly force that fires sharply pointed arrows towards his soul, causing him to fall down in weakness and eventually lead to our own deaths. This is further amplified with the skull symbols and embroidered caskets found on my works.
This show is not anti-religion or anti-rockstar in any way. It's basically anti-norm, because it affirms the failure of believers and fanatics to any given culture and disposition, and it's up to the audience on how their perceiving would handle such statement presented in this form.
And due to my consistent use of semiotics in my artworks, the title of the exhibition itself is formed within the image of a contemporary symbol, \m/, a postmodern icon which people of our generation give label to as a "rock sign". Because residents of our age are under emblems and logos, commanded under the ambiguity of meaning. As for m, invert it and it could denote w that would stand for worship, so it really works that way. The slash, originally used as a hyphen to separate words or characters, is placed beside the m both on its left and right side. View them all together in a spatial manner and there comes an illusion of movement, creating infinity of slashes and letters, metaphorically slashing either the worship, or the worshippers. It can always stand as a separator, as it originally was, or perhaps a bridge, that helps create perpetuity of symbols. This is all left to the imagination. And from this continuity of slashes, m is spliced into a multitude of definitions, from macabre, to masochism, to masticate; we kill the gods, the machines, the makers, because in wrong worship, we destroy the meaning of the thing itself.
But these are all just meanings that I have put to it…in the end; everything else would still depend on everyone’s interpretation. As a whole, or individually, it doesn’t really matter. Because these are just symbols and they are what we make of it.
And in this method of psychedelic, semiotic, and perhaps (psychotic) juxtaposition of human elements, I come up with the slow murder of faith itself, loosely painted in Technicolor.
Second Solo Show
Feb 16 to march 19, 2011
Silverlens / SLab / 20square Gallery
