911, Oil painting by Jaisini

911, Oil painting by Jaisini This triptych is an early work where Jaisini had chosen the emergency number as a decorative possibility for associative image making. The artist may like the subject for its close connection to matters of life, death, and super power. He has utilized the idea not only for its symbolic meaning, but also for a visual purpose. In the triptych, side-by-side, coexists a depiction of eternity, ("1" with water), and a briefness of human life ("1" with Icarus). 

The spatial fragmentation is a visual mode that creates a close up view. The large 9, 1, 1 numbers are inserted and incorporated in the paintings' surface which creates an optical illusion, as during a film development, when images emerge from the background. The left part of the triptych is No 9. This painting unites the number with a mob of demons who were brought together by a voodoo dance. The picture is willfully enigmatic but, at the same time, has a great power of not the phenomena it depicts, but rather the medium itself, an integration of the number with images visually. An anomalous space relationship in the three parts creates magic experience of flame, water, and fall. The three parts of the "911" triptych are to be read as a unity from left to right. The layering juxtaposition of images spins the work in a dynamic movement. "9" part exhibits a dance of spells when dark powers unfold the disaster. This left part of triptych with "9" reminds an arched gateway to Hell with the head devil situated diagonally from the top left corner towards the right foreground. This image is actually a large wooden mask with a huge white fang. A blue razor blade pierces its nose. The demon's eyes are rolled in from his exaltation of the weightless, ritual dance. The artist disguises his personages of dark forces as monsters. For ages the Last Judgments on the walls of churches had made much of frightful and grandiose monsters. Jaisini applies the humorous overtone to a theme of supernatural. In the center of "9," there is a nude female demon with red, absent eyes and bulging tongue, which speak more of her own ecstasy than of terror. 

The color of "9" is not of an infernal pit, but instead is a heated color of the African sun that liquefies air. "1" with water shows "Flying Holland," a phantom-ship, a legendary sign of disaster for sailors. The ocean depths hold the remains of the shipwreck. Skulls and treasures suggest of the life's and earthly possessions' transience, "the memento mori" of a physical life. You may question the connection of the three pictures and find some interesting possibilities. What we have in "911" is not a universal course of events. It is an ordeal of one man, who stays behind his creation and is a survived prototype for his own judgment. Neither the beginning, nor the end of his tormented existence is constructed here, but the lesson of a legend is. To fulfill his concept, Jaisini uses the personages of Icarus who is a traditional image of an inventor. The portrayal of Icarus by Jaisini is a spiritual trial, the expression of delimitation that can happen of just-awakened and terrified consciousness of man. Creation brings the artists close to the destructive powers from beyond. Artists and inventors are familiar with this feeling of fall into abyss that can also be a moment of rise. Icarus is shown in the triptych separately from the treasure of the middle part (1 with water) as he is not a mediocre man who used to be the center of philosophical investigation as, for example in Bosch's "Death and the miser." In Jaisini's "911" the Four Last Things, Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven, turn out in an unusual way.

Icarus looks at the destination of his fall with a weak, last hope, just as the Bosch's dying miser-man, for a miracle. In Jaisini's version, no one passes the test of Last Judgment, except for Icarus. He represents the creative kind, whose legend never dies. He is the one mortal left to face his destiny, yet undecided, is it to be the rise, or the fall? The "911" triptych creates a concept of a life cycle that does not stop, that blasts energy even through death. The work is a new poetic representation of the human dream to reach powers, which do not belong to the human nature. When the limits are being pushed to a critical point resulting in disaster, God is the one who is being called upon. In Jaisini's work, God is not rendered visually, but could be the painting's concept, a code of numbers for help, 9 1 1. The triptych has its aesthetic durability of a new confessional style. Text Copyright: Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb ALL RIGHTS RESERVED New York 2003

Looking at art as an art show at Winkleman Gallery #class Organized by Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida

Conceptual artists refuse to create material art but instead an idea. But the core is absurd association. Less meaning more mind numbing exercises to grasp the concept. What I find revolutionary in interactive conceptual art that it engages more then mind exercise. I personally have significant experience in interactive conceptual art since 1999 when people discovered new way of communication, and then it was email. I happened to have someone who could do for me mass emailing targeting diverse groups of people. Suddenly I was pulled into the endless interaction with people who loved the idea of receiving an email from a person they were supposed to know. Then over 10 years ago email Spam wasn't anything like it is now. Thinking that they know the author of an art essay that maybe it has some personal meaning to them titled "Marble Lady oil painting by Jaisini", "Blue reincarnation/Narcissus o.p by Jaisini, etc. It was the hook.

I started to get most interesting feedback. It turned to be most unusual and enjoyable however premise of this action could be considered ultra conceptual, since there was no visual image presented but the essay that itself reads as a riddle. From my own venture I discovered how much "real people" from all walks of life are interested in art. Especially if they can interact with the writer/artist personally. Next point is about desirability of art. When the image was not presented the recipient of the essay that described a painting become so engaged that desire to SEE the artwork would be much greater then in any other circumstances when the same person can go to a museum and look at beautiful art. What I really love about Whinklman show to be so enthusiastic about it -- its atmosphere. The set up of a classroom gives anyone pleasant de ja vu. Aspiration and high of youth as oceanic breeze gives those precious negative ions that fight depression, promise pleasure, arouse carnality, altogether create this rare feeling of life celebration. That is why when Mira Schor was reading her essay on artist's failure, it didn't make an impression by definition of a lecture to the tired audience. In the gallery set up it was an artistic performance, the woman, her face, manners, her voice, her life experience, her expectation of fame, writing the book, talking to the people who supposed to not become greatest artists in the world felt like gathering of avant-garde group that rehersed a new play. That’s how I saw it and enjoyed it immensely. Live theatre (nor art happening) that wasn't planned to be theatre nor art happening. But art show to break grounds for it's own set purpose, becoming much much more in the eyes of the other party. There are the makers, the participants who won't go further then the frame of the show, but to me with certain acquired knowledge I see the show in most fascinating light that continues my own philosophical quest to understand how art is percieved by people, collectors, dealers and the art makers. Gallery tour more related to the concept of art desirability, I wish it was documented or could become a documentary about an art show when people just "happened to go with the flow." Similarly as when they happened to read the emailed essay and find themselves in the premise of beautiful/creation/art. They weren't planning for it, it was spontaneous, without slight tension that could be there when you come into the gallery expected to purchase some artwork. Pleasure to be with art is contagious. It affects anyone who can witness the process when this process is in fact ART. Ellen Yustas K. Gottlieb

the notion of an 'absolute democracy' in PINOCCHIO, Oil painting by Jaisini

PINOCCHIO, Oil painting by Jaisini 

Jaisini, an artist of a new time and age, looks at the traditional art concerns of good and evil in a wider perspective. As we all know, this used to be a standard Biblical subject for the artist's exploration of the two sides of human nature. In Pinocchio, Jaisini introduces the performance of late modern critical nature. It is a moralizing representation, which is open to interpretation. Little in Jaisini's art is straightforward representation. Most elements are open to variety of interpretations, though a presence of devil in Pinocchio brings us closer to the original concern. As we know, from the history of art, in the art works of medieval times, especially in the paintings of Bosch, devils appear among people during their ordinary working lives. It epitomized the medieval belief in the real unseen existence of demons and devils everywhere. 

For Jaisini it may be a simplest message of the ever-present antagonist to the human corrupt nature. The pictorial language of the artist is based on his search for the unusual associations. Here, Jaisini has produced a remarkably dramatic evocation of turmoil at the party table. The idea of Pinocchio may be the Bosch's type illustration of the body prevalence over spirit. Jaisini does not show tormenting but a more contemporary kind of punishment as a birth of a black child with a knife. His white mother is covered with table cum-stained cloth. When the true image of the childbirth is revealed, the shock tactic invades the space. The orgy itself, the table and under the table seem like a replay of a crime scene. The giving birth mother exposes the unattractive site of birth. 

Her privacy is violated as she is a participant of the table orgy it seems like some distant laughter echoed evilly in her attempt to give birth to that violent child with the knife that cannot yet kill but targets surrounding world with it's pirate like curve. In Pinocchio the gap between the hard, prosaic reality grows more and more and the dreamy flexi reality may be able to reflex more truthfully contemporary life with its complexity. 

No court of law yet defined the art guilty of such reflection of unwanted truth, mimicking the facts of physical world in connection of unlikely situations and less expected interpretations. 

In the Pinocchio the puppeteer behind the staged performance of the orgy is supposed to be the author of the painting, but is he? The artist seems to be a mediator of social sadistic fantasies who entered them through artistic mode on the canvas with almost childish frivolity but with serious impact. In his works the heroes are freed from the burden of the gendered flesh being puppets at the same table with people and creatures of superpower or animals. 

The works like Pinocchio, 911, Meat Grinder have some posttraumatic content of the world in a process of loosing emotional content with its murderous rage and maniac annoyance of speeded change. The orgy which takes place at the table and under it could symbolize the notion of an 'absolute democracy.' To the artist that is satirical, cynical, and tragic all at the same time, 'the most shameless thing.' Jaisini shows a committee of three at the same festive table where two are absent. The liar Pinocchio introduces the ruler. 

The birds symbolize politicians whom artist saw as representatives of the evils inherent in the legal and political machinery. By arranging the partitions of the bodies by the tablecloth, which covers and opens bodies' portions, Jaisini lends an erotic dimension to the somber, grisaille color of the painting. The effect of sobriety, the controlled orgy, not a temperamental and eager as in Hot Dog Party, but rather dead is achieved here. It seems that the tablecloth demarcates two realities, which are not that different from each other, with the same signs of sinnery, evoking man's abstruse appetite for 'bad.' The tablecloth opens a view that an aphorism describes well: "the only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so." Jaisini doesn't adopt both, reality or unreal. He allows his works to receive different interpretations and to continue offering a mystery. super plasticity and integration in 

's work sketch out a new cosmology with the senses translated into visual terms. 

The 'table' composition in Pinocchio, Hot Dog Party, Barbie Q, and so on, creates a phenomenological experience of space. Some things are effective and eternally magnetic. Jaisini as an alchemist searches for a philosopher's stone, which can transmute base metals into gold. He canonizes the technique of his enclosed composition of a secluded line together with the continuous idea, almost a myth, a riddle, a fascinating concept; the artist creates a new reality, fully integrated, with its own laws and reasons for existence. 

The choice of images like Pinocchio, which are grotesque, brings the image to a new universal meaning. The clowns and fools are the representatives of the carnival spirit in the everyday life. In the Bosch's "Ship of Fools' the scene is presided over by a jester fool, whose role is to satirize the morals and manners of the day. Fools posses the time-honored privilege to be other in this world, the right to be in life but not of it, the right to confuse, to tease, to act life as a comedy and to treat others as actors. Jaisini's style is marked by theatrical whimsicalism. 

His use of fools in some works could hold the artist's hope for humanity; hope that life is not necessarily predetermined towards loss, failure, and catastrophe. To the contrary, the artists like Bosch believed that sins of humankind are endemic and that hell is our ultimate destiny. Jaisini creates in a carnivalesque tone his Show Time, Talk Show, Hot Dog Party. Barbie Q, Lunch Time, Sinphony, etc., which reflects the current condition of historical development when life becomes a permanent mixed eruption of excitement, spectacle, happiness, joy, tragedy, loss, conflict, dilemma, terror, and death. Still, human destiny is conceived as open or at least as not finally tragic and not predetermined to failure, but can change and transform. 

The artist gets his impetus and irrepressible energy to create in sometimes carnivalesque tone, as a social critique, nonetheless serious for being theatrical, extravagant, and playful. Carnivalesque may remain an always-dangerous supplement, challenging destabilizing, revitalizing, pluralizing single notions of true culture, true reason, and true art. Text Copyright: Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb ALL RIGHTS RESERVED New York 2003