ARTISTS
Aryo Toh Djojo: Unseen Realities
With curiosity of the extraterrestrial and how it conditions systems of belief, the paintings of Los Angeles based artist Aryo Toh Djojo combines Retrofuturism with the iconography of pop culture to cinematic effect, capturing the hazy clarity of memory and its retroactive distance to moments of baring witness.
Unseen Realities, Toh Djojo鈥檚 augural solo exhibition at Stems, Paris, offers a glimpse into an ambiguous galaxy, possessing an eternal suspension between an ephemeral immediacy, congruent to the technical application of acrylic with the device of an airbrush, and the aesthetic effect of vague dissociation it produces in relation to the otherworldly he takes as subject matter.
Saturated with a nebulous but persistent feeling of the past, typical motifs emblematic of science fiction, awash with an 80鈥檚 an colour palette of vaporwave, most evident of the faded neon depicted in Spirit Guide appear symptomatic of a retrospective tendency localised in Within Reach, a portrayal reminiscent of the iconic moment ET makes contact with Elliott in the sci-fi blockbuster of 1982. Manifesting a visionary nostalgia of extraterrestrial phenomena, Toh Djojo expresses a paradoxical present caught between a slight apprehension the unknown generates and a familiarity of the futuristic aesthetic retroactively. Conceived by the effect of the airbrush, seemingly camouflaging any tinge of anxiety, Unseen Realities gives way to a world of calm curiosity and soft comprehension.
Where the spaceship often signifies the imminence of intergalactic war, Sky Dweller evokes wonder in the spectral relic of a time yet to approach and a time gone by. Signalling a glitch in temporal continuity captured by the black monochrome Into The Void, the notion of a retrospective future casts Toh Djojo鈥檚 constellation of paintings into a clustering of portals, revealing how a spectrum of momentary impressions retroactively stain our collective remembrance. An enquiry into the operation of memory Unseen Realities programmes a database of colliding snapshots, warping and expelling the chronology of events, sightings and happenings into a circuitous entanglement of reincarnation. Recalling the cyclical nature of the butterfly in Transformer, memory proceeds like the spherical spaceship in Sky Dweller, mechanically advancing by circular motion, sustaining its levitation by spinning. If the hovering white oval in The Overseer is representative of the eternal return, the figure depicted simultaneously engineers the cognitive feedback loop whilst observing the revolving model of history. To quote the novelist Tom McCarthy in the manifesto of the International Necronautical Society: Historically speaking with regards to the future, we advance not into new ground but over old ground in new ways more consciously with nuanced understanding.
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With curiosity of the extraterrestrial and how it conditions systems of belief, the paintings of Los Angeles based artist Aryo Toh Djojo combines Retrofuturism with the iconography of pop culture to cinematic effect, capturing the hazy clarity of memory and its retroactive distance to moments of baring witness.
Unseen Realities, Toh Djojo鈥檚 augural solo exhibition at Stems, Paris, offers a glimpse into an ambiguous galaxy, possessing an eternal suspension between an ephemeral immediacy, congruent to the technical application of acrylic with the device of an airbrush, and the aesthetic effect of vague dissociation it produces in relation to the otherworldly he takes as subject matter.
Saturated with a nebulous but persistent feeling of the past, typical motifs emblematic of science fiction, awash with an 80鈥檚 an colour palette of vaporwave, most evident of the faded neon depicted in Spirit Guide appear symptomatic of a retrospective tendency localised in Within Reach, a portrayal reminiscent of the iconic moment ET makes contact with Elliott in the sci-fi blockbuster of 1982. Manifesting a visionary nostalgia of extraterrestrial phenomena, Toh Djojo expresses a paradoxical present caught between a slight apprehension the unknown generates and a familiarity of the futuristic aesthetic retroactively. Conceived by the effect of the airbrush, seemingly camouflaging any tinge of anxiety, Unseen Realities gives way to a world of calm curiosity and soft comprehension.
Where the spaceship often signifies the imminence of intergalactic war, Sky Dweller evokes wonder in the spectral relic of a time yet to approach and a time gone by. Signalling a glitch in temporal continuity captured by the black monochrome Into The Void, the notion of a retrospective future casts Toh Djojo鈥檚 constellation of paintings into a clustering of portals, revealing how a spectrum of momentary impressions retroactively stain our collective remembrance. An enquiry into the operation of memory Unseen Realities programmes a database of colliding snapshots, warping and expelling the chronology of events, sightings and happenings into a circuitous entanglement of reincarnation. Recalling the cyclical nature of the butterfly in Transformer, memory proceeds like the spherical spaceship in Sky Dweller, mechanically advancing by circular motion, sustaining its levitation by spinning. If the hovering white oval in The Overseer is representative of the eternal return, the figure depicted simultaneously engineers the cognitive feedback loop whilst observing the revolving model of history. To quote the novelist Tom McCarthy in the manifesto of the International Necronautical Society: Historically speaking with regards to the future, we advance not into new ground but over old ground in new ways more consciously with nuanced understanding.
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Outer space and alien life forms hasn't always been the topic for fine art. We have seen a renwed appreciation for the likes of Sorayama, Giger and Amano in recent years, but the idea of putting flying saucers and images of space onto canvas is a bit of a challenge.
A new solo exhibition of paintings on view in Paris.
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