Towards a New Color Reading Theory (El Dia/Houston Forward Times/Manila Headline)
2009-04-04 20:40:45
4-color printed newspapers, 3 issues in edition of 2000 each
15' x 20' x 7'

Description: Bauhaus-style "newspapers" were printed and available free for gallery visitors. The layouts and formats were taken from three local Houston ethnic-based journals: El Dia (Spanish-Language), the Houston Forward Times (African-American), and the Manila Headline (Filipino-American), published during the week of the 2009 Presidential Election. By abstracting the content of each publication, a new visual fomat of reduced color was created for viewers to attempt to "read." Three bulletin boards served as a way to display all the pages at once. Color breakdown: yellow=text black=newspaper info, cyan=photos, red=advertisements.

Towards a New Theory of Color Reading
2008
4-color offset litho newspaper, limited edition

Description: Bauhaus-style "newspapers" were printed and available free for gallery visitors. The layouts and formats were taken from three local Houston ethnic-based journals: El Dia (Spanish-Language), the Houston Forward Times (African-American), and the Manila Headline (Filipino-American), published during the week of the 2009 Presidential Election. By abstracting the content of each publication, a new visual fomat of reduced color was created for viewers to attempt to "read." Three bulletin boards served as a way to display all the pages at once. Color breakdown: yellow=text black=newspaper info, cyan=photos, red=advertisements.

The Berlin Wall
2008
found rocks, brass plaques, wooden risers on shelf
20' long x 28

Description: This ongoing project involves a constant search for fragments of the "Berlin Wall" wherever I go. I attempt to find what I believe to approximate the look and feel of pieces of this iconic structure. The collection is composed of facsimilies found in backyards, urban street corners, suburbs, and wilderness areas all over the world. Engraved brass plaques are made to commemorate the day and place of finding. The resulting collection of "proxy" chunks become a fictional collection that attempts to manifest the hopes and promises that the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall temporarily ushered in. As a pivotal moment in global history, its demolishing also brought on the hangover of economic globalization and the reality check of liberal capitalism. As a loaded symbol, The Wall divided the "before" and "after" of the Cold War and the promise of democracy, resulting in the oft-quoted "end of History." By transferring the "aura" of the original fragment onto the "found" version by plaques and labels, I see this project as a way to try to revisit and rethink the promise of that moment, and attempt to find it in the everyday objects that surround me. On an equal level, this collection of faux souvenirs becomes a catalog of my own personal travels, the objects reflecting and documenting my own movements through the world and becoming a personalization of an event far removed and abstracted.

The Berlin Wall (detail)
2008
found rocks, brass plaque, wooden risers on shelf
20' long x 28

Description: This ongoing project involves a constant search for fragments of the "Berlin Wall" wherever I go. I attempt to find what I believe to approximate the look and feel of pieces of this iconic structure. The collection is composed of facsimilies found in backyards, urban street corners, suburbs, and wilderness areas all over the world. Engraved brass plaques are made to commemorate the day and place of finding. The resulting collection of "proxy" chunks become a fictional collection that attempts to manifest the hopes and promises that the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall temporarily ushered in. As a pivotal moment in global history, its demolishing also brought on the hangover of economic globalization and the reality check of liberal capitalism. As a loaded symbol, The Wall divided the "before" and "after" of the Cold War and the promise of democracy, resulting in the oft-quoted "end of History." By transferring the "aura" of the original fragment onto the "found" version by plaques and labels, I see this project as a way to try to revisit and rethink the promise of that moment, and attempt to find it in the everyday objects that surround me. On an equal level, this collection of faux souvenirs becomes a catalog of my own personal travels, the objects reflecting and documenting my own movements through the world and becoming a personalization of an event far removed and abstracted.

The Village (Small Encampments)
2008
C-prints and slide projector with timer, screen, and 80 slides
28" x 42" framed

Description: Expanding on an earlier photographic series, this time-based work intersects two seemingly disparate narratives: a documentary portrait of my domestic space with a completely constructed and fantasized "homeland." Culled from tourist photos of the Philippines downloaded from the internet, the small cut-out dioramas form little embedded colony encampments and outposts, becoming for me crude reminders of a place I am connected to by birth and yet very unfamiliar with. I'm very curious about the idea of "cultural authority" and who gets to claim the boundaries for it. The idea that I am a "counterfeit" Filipino is something I've been very interested in playing with recently, exploring the murky area of cultural authenticity and even the fictions we create for our own allegiances. I'm interested in my own exotification of a real place and space-- the images of people and landscapes are supposed to be linked to me in some way, but to a large extent I have fictionalized my own identity as being "native." Mashing together ideas of "home" and "homeland" could be read as illogical, and I'm interested in the frictions that arise when the very near and the very far occupy the same psychological space. To me, the work is funny, poignant, oddly crude--and at times just plain wrong--in it's attempt to get closer and closer to a literal projection.

The Village (Small Encampments)
2009-04-04 20:53:37
C-prints and slide projector with timer, screen, and 80 slides

Description: Expanding on an earlier photographic series, this time-based work intersects two seemingly disparate narratives: a documentary portrait of my domestic space with a completely constructed and fantasized "homeland." Culled from tourist photos of the Philippines downloaded from the internet, the small cut-out dioramas form little embedded colony encampments and outposts, becoming for me crude reminders of a place I am connected to by birth and yet very unfamiliar with. I'm very curious about the idea of "cultural authority" and who gets to claim the boundaries for it. The idea that I am a "counterfeit" Filipino is something I've been very interested in playing with recently, exploring the murky area of cultural authenticity and even the fictions we create for our own allegiances. I'm interested in my own exotification of a real place and space-- the images of people and landscapes are supposed to be linked to me in some way, but to a large extent I have fictionalized my own identity as being "native." Mashing together ideas of "home" and "homeland" could be read as illogical, and I'm interested in the frictions that arise when the very near and the very far occupy the same psychological space. To me, the work is funny, poignant, oddly crude--and at times just plain wrong--in it's attempt to get closer and closer to a literal projection.

Body Double (Platoon/Apocalypse Now/Hamburger Hill)
2007
three-channel video on flat panel LCD monitors, endless loop

Description: "Body Double" consists of silent moving sequences of a tropical landscape that fades slowly in and out, interspersed with varying durations of a completely black screen. The scenes of sky, mountains, foliage, and rivers are "cropped" in squares and rectangles that at times take up just small portions of the full screen, and occasionally take up the complete screen. I used the movies "Platoon," “Hamburger Hill,” and “Apocalypse Now,” and blocked out the scenes of battle and dialogue, cropping the frame to focus in on the peripheral landscapes (if any) in an attempt to "search for the Philippines.” As a "body double" for Vietnam, the Philippines occupies a strange place in the imagination of the American public--a physically "insignificant" place and also a completely familiar place via its substitution for Vietnam. This video project ignores the original filmic narrative to focus on my own attempts at discovering my place of birth--a kind of reworked "home movie". The resulting video looks like ambient imagery of landscapes and closeups of flora and fauna. The entire running time of each video is the exact running time of the "original" movie, and the sequencing of images is unchanged. There is a corresponding pacing with the original film in that there are cuts and scenery that build to several climactic chase scenes, further heightening the feeling of an implied, but missing, filmic narrative.

By Any Means Available (After Charlotte Perriand)
2007
paper, cardboard, tape, plastic, mixed media
8' x 8' x 20"

Description: As explored in previous work, I have a weakness for modernist design and minimal art. I am seduced by the geometry, the cleanliness, and rigorous aesthetics, but find it hard to ignore the social and cultural history of the period. This series of works is a resuscitation of a modernist shelving unit by French designer Charlotte Perriand, a colleague of le Corbusier--but this time executed in cardboard, paper, glue, and tape. As a gorgeously designed work, Perriand's 1950s shelf had the hallmark clean lines and materials of the modernist era. For my own piece, I was more interested in attempting a similar effect, but with more "local" materials--in this case only the materials available at-hand in my studio. "By Any Means" brings for me a plethora of references beyond simply being an exploration of modernist form. My memories of the Philippines includes cityscapes dotted with architecture in the International Style, of which Perriand was a study of. The irony of seeing these crumbling, decades-old buildings at times shoulder-to-shoulder with slums and shanties built of cardboard and tin brings together not only an interesting clash of architectural building techniques, but of social eras. To make the work I was not allowed to buy, purchase, or otherwise acquire any materials outside of the studio, my own little sphere of the world. I set about scrounging and using only what was at hand--I taped together cardboard and scrap board, used glue and wheat paste to adhere surfaces, and cut colored pieces out of magazines to create fields of color. The resulting collage effect was a direct representation of my "local" territory, and became evidence of the stuff that immediately surrounded me.

Black Market
2005
Paper mache covered objects, shelves, framed Fuji chromogenic lightjet prints

Description: The “Black Market” series consists of altered images downloaded from the internet, as well as sculptural reconfigurations of commodities. I use images of marketplaces in the Philippines that have an array of goods being displayed by vendors, and “black out” the products digitally so it essentially removes the commodities—mainly produce, foodstuffs, and other commonly traded items in local markets. In thinking on the global control of goods and capital exercised by multi-national corporations, I began to speculate that the term "black market"”could not only come to refer to knock-off or imitation goods, but any item being sold or produced that falls outside of the “sanctioned” channels of capitalism. The very idea of a “black market” implies that there is a proper and regulated way to consume and produce, a definition that is increasingly tilted towards global export and import. Could it be possible that traders and small farmers who grow and sell their goods in local (farmer's) markets, by virtue of not participating in a global or corporate flow of capital and production, are creating their own black market, as it could come to be defined? The term itself conjures up images of contraband weapons, drugs, illegal merchandise, human trafficking, and shady backroom deals. What if produce and local handicrafts were seen to be just as dangerous? The resulting images from this series depict both the absence and the overwhelming presence of the goods for sale, as it is hard to ignore what is being blatantly blotted out. Accompanying them will be “black market” items—sculptures that look like oddly provocative blobs of varying shapes and sizes. Painted black, they are covered in layers of paper mache to form a hard skin and protective coat. Inside are “ex-products”: items that were at one time commodities but are no longer so (by either being cast-out, broken, non-functioning, or obsolete), which are then bound together in some manner to form strange shapes before being covered in an outer skin. The blobjects will be laid out on the floor or on raised surfaces and platforms of some kind, to suggest an outdoor market or display area. I envision an interesting array of strange shapes that may or may not suggest what they contain inside, and are re-purposed ex-products that have entered into an alternate form of production and consumption apart from their initial use.

Black Market Blowout (Fallingwater)
2008-02-13 23:45:33
Recycled IKEA furniture, paper mache covered objects
Overall 15' x 10' x 7'

Description: "Black Market Blowout” is a stylized shelving unit loosely based on Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Fallingwater, but made of recycled IKEA melamine furniture. Resting upon the mismatched shelving panels are “re-made” product units made of conjoined items that were at one time in economic circulation but are no longer so (by either being cast-out, broken, non-functioning, or obsolete). Bound together in small groups and covered in a black paper-mache skin, they become strange new items that have entered into an alternate, undefinable, and resistant form of production and consumption. The result is akin to a department store display unit gone wrong. As a "re-do" of an iconic American building this work is at once an homage to the original as well as a mutant and bastard translation of it into a new and different form. It is an implosion of image and object references—-melding together issues of architecture, historical memory, high/low art, and economic as well as cultural production and consumption. This work was shown alongside the "Black Market Series" lightjet prints, the black forms in the images playing against the physical black forms of the sculptures.

Everything Must Go (Grey Market)
2006
digital prints, foamboard, paper, tape, foam
96" x 96" x 32"

Description: What appears to be a large flea market sale of used car stereos, small electronic equipment, and other goods is, upon closer inspection, an installation consisting of digital prints cut and folded to create individual box shapes and flat-front objects, and papered with images of “actual” electronics. The original images are gathered from online vendor sites such as Ebay and craigslist (another source of illicit selling), and the snapshots people take of their items are downloaded and manipulated to “fit” onto a lifesize paper model of the object. Since most images begin as low-resolution jpgs, blowing them up to “actual” size creates a visual distortion of sorts. Stolen electronic goods can be found littering most flea markets, and in this particular work, the images I use create a second level of “stealing”. Issues of bootlegging, counterfeiting, and copyright in the digital age are addressed in this work.

Pacific Super (Stonehenge)
2005
Fuji lightjet print

Description: downloaded an image of Stonehenge from the internet and used it as a template to go shopping at Pacific Super, a chain of Asian supermarkets in Daly City. I chose products based on how their shape and size would “fit” into my own recreation of Stonehenge. The resulting model is made of mainly inexpensive food products imported from China, Japan, the Philippines, and Thailand. “Pacific Super” addresses issues of global production, consumption and cross-cultural translation, using the familiar image of a world-famous "mystical” European landmark and everyday Asian goods.