Thursday, April 11, 2024

Jai Marcus and the art of the collage

In room 4060 at Artomatic there's an artist channeling powerful messages via one of the most amplifying genres of art: the collage.

Jai Marcus at Artomatic
Jai Marcus in room 4060

First let me observe her presentation; she embraces the number one rule of showing o one's artwork: "Who are you?", a simple and powerful rule once art becomes a commodity,  and one which many artists often fail to heed.

Jai Marcus artist statement
Jai Marcus' artist statement

We then learn about the Artist via a well-written, concise and informative statement; now we know the "why" to the art.

Collage by Jai Marcus at Artomatic 2024

The artwork delivers what is clearly an intuitive mind seeking to expand the hidden narrative behind the complex assembly of images. Are we looking at three face images combined to deliver a singular thought or narration? Perhaps, but also notice the attention-grabbing details of the exuberance of the color aspects of this work.

Collage by Jai Marcus at Artomatic 2024

Explore the elegant and brainy composition of this work above. It starts in a geometric pattern, gets disrupted by erotic lips encasing metallic forms and a clock and then erupts into a riot of somewhat abstracted forms in the upper right.

Collage by Jai Marcus at Artomatic 2024

In the above work, we see some compositional tracks that follow the same intelligent and mind-twisting arrangement: It starts with vertical forms on the right, the flowers transition the work to the central piece, and then in the art coup, the left marries abstraction with and end-casing of more vertical forms!

To end, a cyberspace WELL DONE to this collage master!

WAMU on local galleries

WOW! I cannot recall the last time that WAMU talked about DMV art galleries like Elliot Williams did with Tamika Smith on the air today!

Read it here.

More please!