Resurrect, Jethro Jocson’s newest exhibit, is on display at Alliance Française de Manille from July 4 to 24. Jocson’s works portray strange, illusionary ideas in stark backgrounds. Many of the paintings depict these fairy tale-like characters in hazy worlds, staring curiously at gigantic origami shapes like paper boats and airplanes looming in the distance.
“Subjects are constructed through the lens of vibrant colors, textured spaces and origami-esque forms alongside some medieval characters that make their appearances throughout the fairytale stories we grew up with,” the exhibit write-up said.
Resurrect utilizes what Jocson calls a “minimalist-surrealist pattern.” Some of the paintings surround its figures with a multicolored aura made with watercolor. Most of the paintings, however, have a smokey, dreamlike texture around them, done with acrylic paint and dominated by a singular color.
The stylistic influence that Jocson employs creates a simplified, dreamlike environment that focuses on the subjects rather than the surroundings.
“I don’t work on a maximalist approach and composition. [My approach is] used to simplifying forms, subjects, symbols. I used to simplify it to create more mind-bending solutions to your experience,” he said.
Different characters populate Jocson’s paintings, which he calls “fairy tale” characters. Knights and nuns, birds and cats, skulls and plague doctors inhabit the surreal world he creates and tether us to the familiarity of our childhood.
“[How] would I express the world of every moment that people [exist] in our contemporary reality? [By going] back to that childlike images, subjects, and symbols, to create freedom to express something that would create solutions to the problem of our cultural ways,” Jocson said.
The importance of childhood in defining the self is a key observation in these works. It revolves around characters growing up and bravely facing their problems, as if to suggest that bridging the gap between adulthood and childhood allows us the freedom to explore ourselves in the present day.
Two repeating motifs appear in the paintings: origami figurines like paper airplanes or boats, and balloons. Both symbolize flight and freedom, and the paper airplanes represent the need to be able to go with the flow in life, just like a paper airplane whooshes around in any direction.
“Resurrect is all about that. The metamorphosis of us being human, of how we exist in this world, and how we capture those moments. [This is] now [what] I am sharing, those visual images of being [a] child and on a whimsical pattern,” he said.
Jocson even demonstrated this with a performance during the exhibit opening. He utilized tape to create an outline of a paper plane on the floor, before giving the audience paper planes to let loose around the exhibit space—all to the sound of jazz music in the background.
Jethro Jocson’s Resurrect imparts an always timely lesson to remember and cultivate love for the inner child. It is, more than anything, a reminder that the brave characters of our past need not be stuck in our subconscious; that they can help guide us in our journey today to find meaning in how we live our lives.
Related reading: Jomike Tejido’s ‘Manifesto of Play’ Taps into the Inner Child
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