An artist who sets out to make a name for himself or herself in today’s art scene, unlike artists of previous periods, has nothing to react against, no orthodoxy to break away from. The world the artist enters or creates, is free form, without rules or even conventions. Whatever the artist wants to do is okay simply because they want to do it. Glue a hundred stuffed pigeons to a fake power line? Fine. Make a two-hour video showing nothing but a figure walking back and forth on screen biting its nails? No problem. It’s the artist’s job to make the art; the audience’s job is to decide what to make of it.
So what are we to make of the work of emerging Filipino artist Sean Go, who arrived on the scene with a hybrid style influenced by pop, comic book, graffiti, and social commentary? At first glance, the work is arresting and compelling. It employs a vivid palette of largely primary colors, and in its tendency to fill, even overfill, the canvas, it’s the opposite of minimalism. Go identifies himself as an “appropriation” artist. He takes elements or tropes or figures other artists have used and repurposes them in his own work. Where another painter might be at pains to deny or minimize borrowing work from other artists, Go, and his fellow appropriationists, admit and revel in it. In Go’s work, we see hints of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, and Roy Lichtenstein, among others.
In this vein, Go borrows images from the culture, mixing and matching so that the painting contains commentaries as pointed as they are humorous. Take Darth Boba from the Star Wars and Marvel series, where an almost literal Darth Vader, his eyes replaced by hearts, stares at the Boba he holds in his upraised left hand. Vader and Boba are set against a background of a sharp, eight or ten-sided star/weapon, which lends a degree of menace to the comedy. Reduced to its simplest constituents, the painting is of an icon taking a refreshment break, a killing machine in love with a popular Asian drink. It’s funny but adroitly composed and aesthetically compelling while making a point about pop culture. Exactly what point the viewer will decide? There’s no getting away from the sense that Go is satirizing, or at least noticing, the equivalence between entertainment and commerce in a world where the end function of icons, human or otherwise, is to advertise a product.
In the Basquiat-inspired Samson the GOAT, Go places a shaved goat between two columns it’s about to send crashing to earth. The contrast between the biblical Samson, the acronym GOAT which stands for Greatest of All Time, and the literal goat shorn of its power, is delicious. After one finishes admiring the painting, which is a very good Basquiat homage and tracking down its multiple allusions, one could spend hours unpacking its “meaning.” This is quintessential Go, inviting the viewer to have fun while presenting him or her with the challenges of a puzzle.
Born and raised in Manila, Go was sent to the United States to broaden his horizons. He has a total of seven degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, Emory University, Columbia University, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. He’s worked in finance, venture capital and founded a hedge fund. His biography reads like one of his paintings. Last year, Go had shows in New York City, Jakarta, and Manila. This year, he’s off to a strong start with the recent Xavier Art Festival and an upcoming solo show at Secret Fresh Gallery, organized by Derek Flores of DF Agency.
There’s an article on Go in Esquire, videos of him on YouTube, and an up-to-date account of his career in nl.mashable.com. There’s also his website, Seango.art where you can take an extended tour through his extensive oeuvre. I suggest you do. The pictures are always fun, often thought-provoking, and sometimes amazing. They take pop art, or whatever one wants to call it, one step further –unselfconsciously, in fact admittedly, marrying illustration and painting, commerce and commentary, cultural homage, and social satire. However one chooses to anatomize his work in the end, the tour itself is more than worth it.
