Jeff Dizon’s paintings have always been an accurate recording of the times he has lived in. Even in his early days as a student and activist at UP Fine Arts College. His paintings were never short of angst and protest.
All of art, whether pretty or downright angry, are reflections of our time.
His latest show entitled “Sosi” is a direct stab at technology and how it affects human interaction. Technology as symbolized in his paintings as a serpent or a mystical fish with deadly rows of teeth. “ Sosi” is also a visual commentary on today’s cafe society and further delves into the issue of rabid consumerism.
His human form paintings are an expression of movement. Never stagnant. Never still. You can’t tell where their arms and hands begin and end. The white-washed figures are muscular, sinewy, athletic, contorted and animated, like ballet or jiu-jitsu.
The body language hints at the degree of angst or even erotic pleasure for that matter.
All the patterns, lines, curves, splatters, aid to emphasize rapid movement. The more exaggerated the contortion the more intense the narrative.
So where, might we ask, is the artist’s vision?
What idea of an ideal life is the artist trying to suggest?
Underneath the feast of colors, lies a very deep questioning of the times we now live in.
Hidden and disguised under a celebration of color, texture, lines, curves and patterns, lies a desperate, angry, and frustrated call to return to a simple, humble and more-personal past.
The vision is posed as a question.
If you were to go back in time, would you?
