Jason Moss: Pun Intended

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Lost Highway

In these often difficult and dangerously distracting times, when even the art scene has unclearly been demarcated by spectators and speculators, there lies as many levels--on how people react to things happening around and within us--as there are many layers of reading a Jason Moss painting. And depending on how much you are familiar with his aesthetics one gets to know the extent of his creative, spiritual and sexual take on our ongoing torments and traumas.

In Silence and Other Fiends, Moss reiterates his witty bespoke ways of dealing with issues, as he is well versed with many diverse and imaginative skills as an illustrator, animator, and editorial cartoonist rolled into one: the personal becomes political, as the public is private deepening farther on which frequency one adjusts how the hanging of these four artworks are set to be intensified.

As Moss continues to use spaces devoid of figures and figurines, rather than focusing more on a particular mood or feeling, he impressively paints with his mind as his landscapes rationalizing his ongoing disappointments, despair and depression as a call to action. In so doing the viewer voluntary situates himself in the imageries, taking in all portrayals hinted at him or with him in mind (emphasis on the masculine).

The Sectional

The Sectional is set against an off beaten path of lush rice fields with nipa huts behind looming mountains along a pristine river in front done in crass Mabini school of painting. An unidentified flying object (UFO) by the powers that be blatantly violates the semblance of the picturesque and starts dividing the land, literally and figuratively. Signifying the government’s false promises, policies and programs that divisively wreck the havoc to our nation’s progress, Moss wakes/wokes us up with this warning that not only are vast expanses of lands are being converted into housing subdivisions, they are also turned into shallow graves of farmers who till these fertile lands. The Sectional is a war against clichés and takes a pun at the blatant realism in the currently convoluted Philippine art market marked by art fairs and auctions.

Hall of Strabismus

Significant to Moss is how his visual elements align with his hidden messages conveying them in the most suggestive way possible adding to their acquired lyrical value. In Hall of Strabismus the viewer’s gaze is unsettled and confusingly drawn by the two paintings on both corners of the paintings yet one’s attention is even led to that writing on the wall--written in Ilocano, inked by blood. One would have to decipher the suggestive semiotics to be able to grapple the lieu of its signifier to unravel what is being signified.

Moss’s discipline is that he draws every day filling up his notebooks whatever it is that affects him personally like the back of his hand or socially how clouds form the cumulus of his anger. Currently fixated with colors and textures as seen in Message of the Medium. However now that ethereal ambience has quietly permeated the viewer, look closely to decipher what it implicates in-your-face.

Another mood swing by Moss is Lost Highway as referenced from an actual photographed his friend took. As if it is delivering his sentiments around that something is awfully wrong with society to have a loud phallic symbol like this being paraded and concurrently leaving it all to oblivion. With a firm statement attached to it—one just has to stand up on what you think is right.

Moss’s concern for other people’s silence are brought about by their fear of being isolated. They will just keep opinions to themselves rather than voicing out or be shut down (and be deleted forever). Media is an important factor that relates to both the dominant idea and people's perception. The assessment of one's social environment may not always correlate with existing reality. This is where art plays a key role in revealing and being trusted to express the truth--even in codified forms that Jason wittily draws upon.

The Medium is the Message

Organically Silence and Other Fiends portrays the kind of chill out state Moss is embracing/embarking himself in--as the world turns and the current events happening by the moment. It could also be the lamentations of an artist who has found fulfillment in opting out of the upgraded process of art-making. From posting your artworks on social media to having videos of your new exhibitions, to participating in the next biennales.

As Moss celebrates his silver year as an artist, he just can’t keep up with the demands of his trade. He just wants to continue drawing every day and would only exhibit if he has something new and loud to say on canvas.