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Lot Essay
"Only by accepting our desires can we begin to understand who we are." ?This philosophical rumination, scrawled Zen-like across a dream world filled with a child's playful wish list, animates and gives fruition to Jon Jaylo's latest work, We Will Always be Dreamers On The Other Side Of The Moon (Lot 161).
A continuation of Jaylo's acclaimed series of dream-like images of a mirror world focused on the phantasmic desires of a child (actually, the artist's son), the painting introduces to Jaylo's viewers the twin infusions of a techno-utopian throwback distilled into the postmodern aesthetic of "steampunk" and an alternate reality activated by a child's desire to be free of adult supervision; like the character Max in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.
In Jaylo's work, these two concerns mingle with the central focus of the story, Jaylo's child-character wears a distinctive metallic top hat, a shirt, bow tie and waistcoat, and flashes a lucky hand of cards. It is what is in the top hat and arm that signifies the difference: an antique clock, a World War One-era aviator goggles, and a metallic contraption with power buttons. These, along with blast furnace goggles worn by a large teddy bear at the back, signify the promising techno-utopianism of a century ago, when Jules Verne and H.G. Wells spoke of a fantastic tomorrow filled with steam-powered machines.
This child with his menagerie of animal-headed humans serves as a magic mirror image, a fantasy depiction that is the reverse o? the bleak reality we experience; beyond a beckoning moon amidst a sky filled with nautilus-shaped air balloons. Through the self-portrait of a surreal floating heart of a head on the left, Jaylo re-imagines himself as a musing adult revisiting childlike innocence, and is instead comforted by the joy that he has envisioned upon others.
- Reuben Ramas Ca
A continuation of Jaylo's acclaimed series of dream-like images of a mirror world focused on the phantasmic desires of a child (actually, the artist's son), the painting introduces to Jaylo's viewers the twin infusions of a techno-utopian throwback distilled into the postmodern aesthetic of "steampunk" and an alternate reality activated by a child's desire to be free of adult supervision; like the character Max in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.
In Jaylo's work, these two concerns mingle with the central focus of the story, Jaylo's child-character wears a distinctive metallic top hat, a shirt, bow tie and waistcoat, and flashes a lucky hand of cards. It is what is in the top hat and arm that signifies the difference: an antique clock, a World War One-era aviator goggles, and a metallic contraption with power buttons. These, along with blast furnace goggles worn by a large teddy bear at the back, signify the promising techno-utopianism of a century ago, when Jules Verne and H.G. Wells spoke of a fantastic tomorrow filled with steam-powered machines.
This child with his menagerie of animal-headed humans serves as a magic mirror image, a fantasy depiction that is the reverse o? the bleak reality we experience; beyond a beckoning moon amidst a sky filled with nautilus-shaped air balloons. Through the self-portrait of a surreal floating heart of a head on the left, Jaylo re-imagines himself as a musing adult revisiting childlike innocence, and is instead comforted by the joy that he has envisioned upon others.
- Reuben Ramas Ca