ABOUT THE WORK

While other painters would depict scenes which bustle with activity, Jose John Santos stops time. The works of Jose John Santos can be startling in their surreal lack of sentimentality. In a rare moment of social commentary about Philippine realities, especially how justice works in the country, Jose John Santos might as well quote Andre Breton who once wrote: "There are no landscapes. There is not even a horizon. There is only, physically speaking, our immediate suspicion which surrounds everything." A deadpanness — funny, desolate, usually both — is conveyed in Jose John Santos’ depiction of a solitary stall with the message “For Sale”. There is something equally surreal about the linear simplicity of its design, down to the wheels; just as there are suggestions of the measured emptiness in the surrounding space. Calm and immaculate the stall may be, but the calm barely conceals some present menace. Only one half of the balance of justice is depicted. The saleslady holds the posts as if it is a prison; the viewer would be prone to an extravagantly subjective analysis of atmospheric effects.