Perfect Lovers
Yason Banal
08 September – 07 October 2012
Curated by
08 September – 07 October 2012
What was implied but not said, June Yap messing with Boris Groys’ The Communist Postscript, London & New York: Verso, 2009.
Art is more universal and more democratic than money. It is, moreover, a more effective medium than money, for more can be said than can be bought and sold. But above all, art gives to every individual human life the possibility of contradicting power, fate, and life—of criticizing, accusing, and cursing them. Art is the medium of equality. When art becomes linguistic, it is compelled to operate under the conditions of the equality of all speakers—whether it wishes to or not. Admittedly, the equality of art is distorted and destroyed if it is demanded that all speakers construct arguments of formal-logical validity. But the task of art is precisely that of freeing humans from oppression by formal-logically valid language. Art is a type of desire, for it is defined as the unfulfilled and unfulfillable love of wisdom. But it is a desire that has been totally linguistified, and its paradoxicality has thus been made transparent. Art is an institution that offers humans the chance to live in self-contradiction without having to hide this fact. On this basis, the wish to expand this institution to the whole of society can never be wholly suppressed.
About the Artist
About the Artists
Yason Banal (b. 1972, Philippines) is an artist whose work moves between photography, video, installation, text and performance, exploring myriad forms and conceptual strategies in order to research and experiment with associations and refractions among seemingly divergent systems. He obtained a BA in Film at the University of the Philippines, an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths-University of London, residencies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and AIT in Tokyo, and visiting lectureships at London Metropolitan University and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts.
Banal’s work-in-progress is inspired by a conceptual astronomy around abstraction and document, ranging from Jose Rizal’s transglobal coordination and Isabelo Delos Reyes’ experimental archive amidst 19th century politics and anti-imperialist imagination, to possible contemporary coordinates in supernatural reality TV, lo-fi internet culture, geomarket forces and neo-migrant formalism. His work attempts to explore hidden meanings and associations through action led interventions. His works often place viewers and participants in vulnerable situations in order to trigger psychological experiences or memories. One such project, The Legend of the Sleepwalking Tricks, involved a group of young men who listened to death metal music while sipping milk laced with sleeping pills. Banal treads a thin line between illusion and reality, and a more serious threshold between passive consumption of art and violation of ethical taboos.
His works have been shown at the Tate, Frieze Art Fair, IFA Berlin, Oslo Kunsthall, Singapore Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Queens Museum of Art and Cultural Center of the Philippines. Upcoming projects include Bangkok Art and Culture Center (Bangkok), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (Manila), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow) and Queensland Museum of Art (Brisbane).
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Yason Banal (b. 1972, Philippines) is an artist whose work moves between photography, video, installation, text and performance, exploring myriad forms and conceptual strategies in order to research and experiment with associations and refractions among seemingly divergent systems. He obtained a BA in Film at the University of the Philippines, an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths-University of London, residencies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and AIT in Tokyo, and visiting lectureships at London Metropolitan University and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts.
Banal’s work-in-progress is inspired by a conceptual astronomy around abstraction and document, ranging from Jose Rizal’s transglobal coordination and Isabelo Delos Reyes’ experimental archive amidst 19th century politics and anti-imperialist imagination, to possible contemporary coordinates in supernatural reality TV, lo-fi internet culture, geomarket forces and neo-migrant formalism. His work attempts to explore hidden meanings and associations through action led interventions. His works often place viewers and participants in vulnerable situations in order to trigger psychological experiences or memories. One such project, The Legend of the Sleepwalking Tricks, involved a group of young men who listened to death metal music while sipping milk laced with sleeping pills. Banal treads a thin line between illusion and reality, and a more serious threshold between passive consumption of art and violation of ethical taboos.
His works have been shown at the Tate, Frieze Art Fair, IFA Berlin, Oslo Kunsthall, Singapore Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Queens Museum of Art and Cultural Center of the Philippines. Upcoming projects include Bangkok Art and Culture Center (Bangkok), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (Manila), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow) and Queensland Museum of Art (Brisbane).
Related Exhibitions
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