In the sea of the virtual
Jose Tence Ruiz’s latest one-man show “Kotillion” ongoing in the month of August at Art Informal,
There may be some familiar already near mythic figures resurfaced from the past catalogues of the artist’s subconscious — the “Dona Kotillion” in a variety of props and poses amid a sea of virtuality, two faces of “Ophelia” in an alternate mix, and wash of madness, “Lucifer” as a bungee-jumping fallen angel — but they are here thoroughly relocated in the viewer’s present, like a humorous nightmare come to life.
While the program notes by Eileen Ramirez make mention of detritus and dissipation, and a lot of artifice prancing about as if gothic tropes themselves, why, even comparing the painter Tence to a kind of DI (dance instructor) of our art and times, the gallery goer in the meantime can seek solace in the panoramic layout of Art Informal, where before a canvas the retina can take in the secret colors of a parallel world. In a sense the painter’s work here constitute a matrix, and the viewer a participant to whatever memory the future has in store.
But this is not all about the absurd and its varied manifestations. Take Tence’s predilection for the cotillion, which we understand is a dance of alta sociedad in the old days, particularly during graduation balls, debuts, and the like. The painter however sees fit to transpose this motif into a plethora of abstractions, and juxtapositions, so that the dance becomes not macabre but a two-step jazz digression complete with contrapuntal dissonant rhythms.
The rhythm becomes the message and su!, “Dona Kotillion” and her retasos are laid bare in their very real virtuality.
A kind of dismembered trilogy is the three kotillions: In ecru amid the rising tide of virtuality; sinking in the sea of the virtual; and carnage drowning in an ocean of virtuality.
The painter may be trying to tell us something here, only words and even images would not suffice: in the world of instant simulation, everyone becomes fair game, everything becomes amoral.
For how can we tell one virtual reality from the other in an era of confusion and mixed signs and manufactured products, the cotillion adopting the painter as signal worker or dancer as the case maybe, to set the balance aright.
The fallen angel as bungee jumper has further philosophical ramifications: if Lucifer’s leg is tied to an elastic rope, then he hasn’t really fallen, and in fact can be sprung back up to the ranks of the unfallen. The use of the color blue in the painting is inspired, and smells of oily sky.
The other Lucifer bungee jumper seems suspended crosswise in a pocket of air, perhaps trapped in a space-time continuum. But this does not make his expression less menacing or less gothic.
The twin “Ophelias,” a few paintings between them, deserve second even third looks. The one underneath the sports utility bomb near the gallery entrance/exit could be a likely victim of a car bomb, but she looks none the worse for wear in that scrap metal heap.
The other “Ophelia” near the garden court has yellow amid dark gray as pervading color, and a face resembling Kris Aquino’s on that stark tragic heroine of the Shakespeare play, now transposed floating through centuries in a kind of metaphysical estero at the lowest tide. Deal or no deal? As another Ruiz once wrote, “My boredom with both life and death has become a matter of life and death.”
Or, doing Hamlet one better, Cesar Ruiz again: “My love for her was such that even if it were requited, it would remain unrequited.”
Of a piece or sort of volleyball libero, though not exactly the odd man out, is the painting of “KConcepcion Por Juice por Santo.” It’s the artist’s send-up of pop and religious culture, and how showbiz chismis could well be the opium of the masses. The actress looks like a stampita, and the stampita a painting the megamom should not by any measure pass up.
One goes through the exhibit slightly overwhelmed both by the size of the canvases as well the artist’s multi-layered approach, how art or the notion of art alone can survive in the dog eat dog marketplace of ideas. Word has it that Tence shut himself off the everyday world for months for work on this show, and the resulting fruit has fallen off ripe from the loom of his labors.
There’s a certain progression in the paintings of Tence that could be noted, from the obsession with carcasses, and spires to the editorial cartoons to the present most recent configurations. Central to this conceit is the notion of the artist as survivor, mainly because there is no choice but to create in a humdrum world intent on obliterating the sublime. Art then becomes the last act of benevolence.
A taste of “Kotillion” can be had in the Britania Art Projects showroom on Sgt. Catolos off
The matrix lives in Tence’s “Kotillion.” Where Dali may no longer be Dali, and the unconscious made real is the one. For what was once hidden will soon come to light.
