COVER-UPS

                Artist Jonas Eslao moves away from figuration and now revels in abstract expressionism in his latest one-man exhibition. Here, the canvas becomes an arena charged with the presence of the artist as he paints with the full exertion of his body, amplifying his physical prowess, through the aid of a household item: the floor mop.

                Among the layers of paint present in these works are biomorphic shapes resulting from the heavy texture, which had been applied to each canvas. These forms allude to the artist’s journal of abstract landscapes, which are then almost erased once Eslao begins to work with the mop, repeatedly covering the field. In doing so, we imagine what happens inside the studio of the artist —a strikingly similar scene to what transpires in almost each and every household where fists are clutched to the handle of the mop and arms flail outward and inward in an attempt to clean and cover-up the ground.   

                Drawing influence from Jackson Pollock’s techniques in action painting, Eslao examines the connection of the artist’s body with his material. In this case, the polarizing functions of the mop, which is now both a household cleaning aid and an art-making tool, provide us with a rather more intuitive and yet a rational understanding of how the ordinariness of our own body and the mundane objects around us can contribute to define the impetus of our own  physical movements. Eslao engages in an activity where the thrust shown in each painting no longer rests in the images and subjects produced but rather how the inner stimulus of the artist controls every loose brushstroke and every spontaneous motion that happens within.  The unified impulse and presence of the artist, thus, becomes tempered in time, colors, and, space.

– Gwen Bautista