Provenance:
Hiraya Gallery

Exhibited:
Hiraya Gallery, 2000

ABOUT THE WORK

Unnerving yet undoubtedly alluring, the works of Jojo Legaspi are not afraid to examine the sometimes mysterious, banal, and irreverent aspects of the mind and the human condition. Much like his practice, Legaspi’s interest in art also stemmed from an unusual place. The artist’s degrees in Biology and Zoology allowed him to observe his desired subject matter in a meticulous and almost clinical manner; allowing him access into the relationship between the physiological, psychological, and visual elements of his forms and figures. Thus, on the surface Legaspi’s works may seem macabre and twister, yet to the keen eye and the dauntless observer, the artist’s works unarguably speak volumes about our present condition and the historical context we revel in. Legaspi plays with oil to create portraits that seem to dramatize the explosion inevitable after the repression of a society, sexually, and otherwise. Legaspi’s contemporary art installations, sculptures, and drawings bring together image, text, and materiality to bear witness the dark life-narratives relating to sexuality and other social conflict within the Philippine psyche, as he seems to experience it. Using muted colors, smooth brush strokes and simple lines, his minimal backgrounds serve to thrust his dramatic yet realistic subjects provocatively to the viewer’s immediate attention - portraying the bleak and obsessional imagery that is confronting, but is often filled with tenderness and pity, evoking the dualism of love and hate that exists in daily life. This act, which is akin to opening up a discussion or debate, humanizes and democratizes Legaspi’s chosen context in a unique dialectical method. For Legaspi, tapping into and subverting the two extremes of the spectrum is the most effective way of synthesizing a truly holistic message. The direct and confrontational nature of his imagery as shown in this piece, with its startling lack of ornamentation or bright colors and its explicit content, is a testament to the truthful sincerity and strong emotions in Legaspi’s mind wherein portraying his subjects as believable and human involved in gross acts of dissolute and corrupt debauchery represents the fallibility of his subjects as individuals and as symbols of society’s perversions and contradictions.