Jerry Tan's "Recent Work" at Mag:net Gallery Katipunan

The title may be a severe understatement, but the concepts in Recent Work by Gerry Tan at Mag:net Katipunan this September compel the public to view the show for reasons other than mere novelty.

Recent Work as a show exemplifies Tan's preoccupation with the conceptual aspects of art production, of generating art that grapples with ideas, rather than obsessing with the perfection of technical form. In Tan's recent body of works, the visual image intentionally reflects the flux of process, rather than being an end to itself.

In the show, Tan demonstrates the process and interventions of mechanical and manual reproduction (e.g. photography, printing, painting, film) in producing and experiencing works of art.

He explores the continuous process of reconstructing image and meaning in a series entitled Reconstructing Schnieder's Isolation Room, a collection of three 4.5' x 3' oil paintings on tarpauline. Here, Tan replicates an image of German artist Gregor Schieder's work entitled Isolation Room by having a photograph of the work from a book scanned and reproducing it on tarpaulin, a waterproof material more commonly utilized in graphic advertising.

Tan intentionally choses the image of Schnieder's Isolation Room to depict “a cartoon of isolation pondering on itself”. The artist paints over the image reproduced in tarpaulin, treating the material as a 'stencil for painting', as the artist terms it. He then repeats the process of reconstruction by taking a photograph of the finished painting and reproduces the digital image on a tarpauline of the same size. The result is three near-identical reconstruction of the original image, as experienced by the artist through photography.

Tan also creates a large-scale reproduction of Schnieder's living room and encrusts it in beeswax, enbalming the object as if to preserve the image. Ironically, this process of preservation fundamentally alters the original image itself.

Tan also presents an installation comprised of a TV monitor set at the center of the wall at the farthest end of the gallery. A surveillance camera is stationed at the opposite end, documenting the interior space of the gallery. Tan then paints in oil the image of this interior on the TV screen as he directly sees it from the screen, isolating himself—and all other viewers in the future—from the projected image.

Recent Work opens at 7 PM on September 26 at Mag:net Gallery Katipunan, and will be on view up to October 14, 2006. For inquiries, please contact 9293191 (Malou) or email magnetcafekatips.com.ph or visit www.magnet.com.ph