An artist’s practice transformed: Jayson Cortez’s Hybrid

It is a truth well known that human beings change and grow. When one seems stuck and sees the need for movement, it is often a brave act of will that leads to new horizons in their life and work. In an artistic landscape partially driven by the dictates of outside forces, it is an even braver act for an artist to defy conventional wisdom about one’s creative capacities.

In Jayson Cortez’s new exhibition Hybrid, the artist draws on the desire for freedom and transformation as manifested in personal growth. It is a desire driven by a willingness to embrace what he sees as his own artistic instincts and take them in new and fruitful directions. The desire is made visible in works that draw on his recent fascination with abstraction and his willingness to stretch its boundaries. At the same time, this exhibition allows viewers to see continuity and discontinuity in his art as he attempts to see beyond his past creative horizons.

Cortez’s work in this show draw on two major pioneers of modern abstraction. He finds inspiration in the work of Hilma af Klint, whose works drew on the esoteric and mystical. She saw her paintings as spiritual messages speaking of a new vision for the cosmos and the self. Her works rely upon a symbology so arcane and steeped in mystery that it has only been in the last half-decade when her role as a prophet of the abstract in modern art became clear. At the same time, he pays homage to Jackson Pollock’s disruptive use of color and even the way it is deployed. Pollock’s work, and those of his peers at the time, relied upon the bold, brash, reimagining of the abstract in a way that poses an interesting contrast to Klint’s clean and orderly deployment of color and other elements. In so doing, these works remind the viewer that artistic growth requires challenging one’s previously held limitations.

At the heart of this exhibit are a series of new paintings that explicitly celebrate what Cortez sees as his artistic rebirth. These works continue his fascination with the human face that has given him much inspiration in the past, particularly as he envisaged it in a hyper-realistic mode. In doing so, these works reframe the face as the site of renewed self-expression as it seeks growth and change. The hybridity which he claims to define this exhibition is in how the modes of realism and abstraction interact and provoke renewed reflection on how we as humans are capable of growth despite the pressure of expectations that seem to keep us stuck.

One of the works that highlight this interactive provocation is a painting called “Color Burst,” where Cortez places a field of color on the upper third of this otherwise grayscale painting. In a homage to Pollock’s technique, this titular burst of color adds a touch of literal excitement to the scene, illustrated by the facial expression of surprise and delight. It is deliberately placed to introduce a provocative interruption amidst the usual stylized realism for which Cortez has become known.

In another work, “Eyes of the Unseen,” the feminine archetype which Cortez often invokes in his work holds space for another sacred figure, the dove, which symbolizes the descent of divine wisdom and the potential for peace. As the feminine figure breaks from a frame, the artist offers this moment of liberation as a moment of inbreaking wisdom. 

At the same time, Cortez offers another angle on this burst of creativity in his drawings, a more intimate glimpse into the mind of an artist’s practice transformed. The works in this series explore animalistic figures as a locus for the expression of deep human emotions, relying on bolder lines and figures in attempting to speak from a different place in the artist’s creative life. While these images draw on the artist’s past proclivities toward expressionistic and realist modes, it heralds possible paths toward an arguably disruptive creative future. 

Hybrid is a celebration of artistic rebirth, of meeting new challenges in one’s art and life. It is an invitation to see one’s life ripe with the possibility of transformation, of clarity and change despite the challenges one faces. It also emboldens us to see the world afresh, just as Cortez has done over the years, in response to how we become more of who we are meant to be.

Jayson Cortez is a visual artist who has exhibited both in the Philippines and abroad, most notably in London and Tokyo. This is his fourth solo exhibition with White Walls Gallery.

Ren Aguila