It’s Not a Problem Until It’s a Problem
Jayson Oliveria
12 March – 06 April 2014
Curated by
12 March – 06 April 2014

Jayson Oliveria’s latest solo exhibition, It’s Not A Problem Until It’s A Problem, is a barrage of new works on paper and found objects that refuses solutions and easy summations. His works are a bombardment of images culled not from the distant annals of history, but from the trash bins of a more recent past. Brash, dirty, vulgar, aggressive, nostalgic, toxic, comic, and tragic, they assume and embody the anxieties of our current age of discontent.
Art that provokes and questions tastes and beliefs is the keystone of the 20th century. Tangled threads run through a succession of movements in art history that are not linked by geography or style; rather, they carry the same assumption that art’s role is to ignite our senses and sensibilities. It is aimed at disrupting and liberating art from prevailing orders to bring forth new aesthetic and political freedoms.
“All power to the imagination” was Breton’s radical call for the Surrealists; it is not by chance that it also became the slogan of student protesters in the 60s. It remains relevant to contemporary artists who are working both against the formality and purism of Modernism and the tired narratives and hackneyed clichés that are continuously resuscitated and reproduced in much of painting today.
In It’s Not A Problem Until It’s A Problem, Oliveria props up paper as an alternative surface for painting, emphasizing its temporal and spatial qualities. The works are reminiscent of his previous exhibition Fuck You Over There, Works On Paper Here in 2010 at the now-defunct Mag:net Gallery, wherein he trashed the small narrow space with a slew of paintings on papers and other debris.
The new works at MO_Space are less confined and hasty, yet they still exude the all-consuming urgency of the commonplace and the ordinary. The main set of works is comprised of several large-scale, back-to-back paintings assembled from multiple sheets of paper, all imprinted and somehow related to the word ‘exit.’ Hung from the gallery’s ceiling, they function like a virtual barricade for the viewers who have no recourse but to turn around and navigate them in order to see the work from both sides. These fractured views are further layered and made denser with smaller, poster-like works with random painted images and texts. Scattered on the floor are farting, salvaged wastebaskets that have been covered with a whitewash of paint and pages from the book, Inside the Body: Fantastic Images From Beneath the Skin, and stenciled with the words, “Eat Shit Die.” Another book, How to Solve Problems: Elements of a Theory of Problems and Problem Solving, torched just so that its pages are still readable, acts as a peg for the motley of images and objects.
In Oliveria’s works, the ephemera and flotsam of our times are recalled, but only to be rejected and thrown back again into the cesspool of the subconscious. There is a sense of nostalgia, but it is a nostalgia that is immersed in the fallibilities of the present and the recent past. Like the earlier Romantics who believed that art’s essence lies in its “forever becoming, and never to be perfected,” each element in Oliveria’s orchestrated chaos is relished and abandoned in one sweeping gesture and then ultimately left to doubt itself. The manner by which this is executed is seemingly brute, but is in fact well-calculated. Contradictions abound, but so what? Isn’t art supposed to contradict itself?
Exhibition Documentation
Works
Works
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Collection of the Artist
- Exit Series
Acylic and collage on paper
2990 x 2100 mm
2014 - Exit Series
Acylic and collage on paper
2990 x 2100 mm
2014 - Exit Series
Acylic and collage on paper
2990 x 2100 mm
2014 - Exit Series
Acylic and collage on paper
2990 x 2100 mm
2014 - Exit Series
Acylic and collage on paper
2990 x 2100 mm
2014 - Exit Series
Acylic and collage on paper
2990 x 2100 mm
2014 - Exit Series
Acylic and collage on paper
2990 x 2100 mm
2014 - Exit Series
Acylic and collage on paper
2990 x 2100 mm
2014 - Dark Star
Acrylic on paper
1995 x 1405 mm
2014 - Church Goer
Acrylic on paper
1995 x 1405 mm
2014 - Untitled
Acrylic and styropore on paper
1995 x 1405 mm
2014 - Wipe my Bum with Bills
Acylic collage on paper
2800 x 2000 mm
2014 - If I Were a Scientist…
Photo and wooden stand
757 x 600 mm
2014 - Visual Exploration Apparatus
Acrylic on paper
2100 x 2000 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014
- Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Math Series
Acrylic on paper
1000 x 700 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014
- Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Curator Series
Collage on wooden trash bins
300 x 205 x 305 mm
2014 - Burn
Book
227.5 x 150 mm
2014
Exhibition View
360° View
Video Catalogue
About the Artist
About the Artists

Jayson Oliveria (b. 1973) graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the University of the Philippines. He is a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Award (2006), and Ateneo Art Award (2004), and artist residencies at Big Sky Mind Artists Projects Foundation in Cubao (2003–2004) and at Tetra Art Space in Fukuoka, Japan (2005). Oliveria has shown widely in both local and international galleries, including Surrounded by Water, The Drawing Room, Finale Art File, Ark Galerie in Jakarta, the Tate Turbine Hall in London, Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill in Austria, Artinformal, and Freies Museum Berlin, and VOLTA12 in Markthalle, Basel.
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Jayson Oliveria (b. 1973) graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the University of the Philippines. He is a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Award (2006), and Ateneo Art Award (2004), and artist residencies at Big Sky Mind Artists Projects Foundation in Cubao (2003–2004) and at Tetra Art Space in Fukuoka, Japan (2005). Oliveria has shown widely in both local and international galleries, including Surrounded by Water, The Drawing Room, Finale Art File, Ark Galerie in Jakarta, the Tate Turbine Hall in London, Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill in Austria, Artinformal, and Freies Museum Berlin, and VOLTA12 in Markthalle, Basel.
