Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

Contemporary nihilist works such as the counterculture art of Jayson Oliveria declared the centuries old traditions of art, from perspective to the representation of the human figure, to be obsolete. “I don’t differentiate between images, or place higher importance on any one of them. Everything flats out on the canvas, though some would be subjected to tweaking — modifying here and there, adding or deleting some parts of the image, based on the whimsy of the moment or what I thought would work for them as they are painted. These images accumulate on the surface, layered each time by another image, or by a trace of a part of an image until it exhausts itself, the painted surface exhausts itself, the exhaustion as the denouement of a physical and mental exertion for this ineffable search which I also don’t have any idea what it is. The method of painting for me is more important, rather than its end. If the end is an abstraction then so be it, a puzzle more tangled than ever by the questions that knot each other out or negate each other. It’s all like getting a haircut from a salon only to end up messing it up all the more after you’ve stepped out the door, not being happy with the barber or the faggy hairdresser has done to your hair.”