Juno Santos | “E” is the 3rd Day of the Week

Juno Santos’ first solo exhibition comes as a wealth of inspiration: from his own practice as a musician, as tribute to the music he loves playing, and to the intersectionality of these concepts into visual art. What lies at the center of his work is the musicians’ playlist—a compendium of details for complete artists’ facts, titles, playing time, and the order in which he plays them—interpreted visually through acrylic markers and paint accompanied by an equally astounding and structured process. This attention to structures and patterns opens up a new way to perception, as evident in the exhibition title where melody, as symbolized by the 3rd note in the musical scale, collides with patterns of time and space. This overlapping aspects of different activities —whether in life or art in general—offers a refreshing take on how we approach exhibitions.

He explains why “E” becomes the designated letter for the third day and why it holds a particular importance for him: “There are 7 days in a week and there are 7 notes in an octave. I assigned notes on days of the week to make a connection between the days and the work that I do which is music related… Monday is on the key of C since it is the very start of the work week. Tuesday is in the key of D, followed by E (Wednesday)...Ultimately, I chose the key of E as my favorite day of the week in the standard scale because I have gigs every Wednesday.”

As a pianist who engages in live performances, Juno is very mindful of his playlists. He prepares his lists before each session, which are also inspired by  certain themes—revolving around pop, rock, standards, broadway musicals, and movie soundtracks. But the most prominent among his playlists are musical numbers related to the legendary singer, Frank Sinatra. Translated visually, they manifest through a combination of color palettes, with texts made up of titles and lyrics, and a group of horizontal canvases which Santos calls as his ‘Happy Wednesday Playlist Series.’

These colorful canvases indeed exude a jovial atmosphere that is reflective of its creator’s passion and dedication in visualizing his performances. The process itself is aligned with this methodical approach, as stated in his own explanation: “When I begin each painting, I write down the titles, artists, lyrics of the songs that I have been practicing the whole year. I used a spectrum of different colors (either a rainbow format, a one-color- format, a two-color format or at random), depending on how I feel. Afterwhich, I took a photo of the first layer for reference. In the second layer, I used acrylic paints to cover the first layer. And then I rewrite again the song titles and lyrics by using acrylic markers in different colors or in a two-color/three-color pattern...”

This layered, numbered, and structured progression is very much akin to making music to which the whole show is dedicated to. The process of covering layers upon layers of colors and texts could be in itself an allusion to the musical lingo of ‘doing covers.’ In doing so, Juno Santos recognizes the world of patterns and relations, of equivalences and coincidences. It requires a special kind of awareness to be able to discern these things, and Juno paves the way for us in his own light-hearted, colorful, informative, and needless to say—very musical approach.

A special video by Idan Cruz documenting Juno Santos’ performances will also be shown alongside his works to give context to this multi-disciplinary method.

/CLJ

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