Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

The dialogue between Jojo Legaspi’s works and their audience happens beyond the realm of language, the visual experience evokes sensation without touching on words. His images lock your gaze, turning your attention inwards; time slows. The child-like drawings belies the nightmarish content of his work. Legaspi’s paintings are often free of discernible context, showing people with sallow faces in a state of unnatural isolation. You need time with Legaspi’s paintings. They are still images charged with a haunting energy, silent, harbouring secrets of their own, awaiting the onlooker to unravel their mysteries. They do not ask the audience to bring the images to life in their imagination, but to see the life that is in them. Although their features have recognizable attributes, they represent universal types. Legaspi deals with the power dynamic between ‘I’ and the ‘Other’ and gives the viewer studies of human interaction derived from the nucleus of his communal spaces. It is hard to tell if these agonizing episodes of social critique are borne out of his bouts of existential unease or if it is the other way around. After all, the paradox of specific human experience is that no matter how specific it is down to the minute detail, it will still stand as a universal concern. His work is concerned with the investigation of personal and psychological states, and his sculptures and drawings build on disturbing childhood memories. Using neutral, high contrast colors, smooth brushstrokes and simple lines, his minimal backgrounds serve to thrust his dramatic yet Realistic subjects provocatively to our immediate attention. Legaspi’s bleak and obsessional imagery can be confronting, but is often filled with tenderness and pity, evoking the dualism of love and hate that exists in daily life. The sincere approach to personal experience is precisely shown through Legaspi’s lack of preference towards vibrant colors and other compositional ornamentations. There are several sources for Legaspi’s images, such as the religious fascination with the gruesome details of Christ’s crucifixion and the martyrdom of the Saints. The daily reality of poverty, corruption, and violence for many Filipinos is another source. The artist’s own sense of sexual alienation, being an openly gay man within a society generally intolerant of homosexuality, also inflects his work.