Jason Teraoka’s aging women have the predatory weight of Jose Clemente Orozco’s, especially the upside-down blonde at the bottom of the frame in a mural in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City.
Like Orozco, Teraoka knows how to take the air out of a room. He knows how to paint glamor after it’s gone and everybody’s time is borrowed.
His women can eat you whole; his men have nothing to say and nothing to say it with. Teraoka grew up in Hawaii watching movies interrupted by commercials on late night TV.
He paints with acrylics in wet glue:
A few years ago, I became really frustrated with this painting I was working on. So I took a bottle of glue, squirted it all over, and applied more paint on top of that. I liked what it was doing, so I kept developing this method. The wet glue absorbs the acrylic paints in a certain way, so I feel like I can get a nice skin quality. I guess it’s a psychological thing too – I can really ‘feel’ the skin texture as I’m painting. As it starts to dry, it repels. That’s how I get the washes in the background: I get this foamy mix, and as I paint it over it separates, creating these interesting effects.
-from Toyoko Art Beat, full interview here.
His background is in graphic novels. If he were what Pop Surrealism were about, I’d be all over it. Instead, too often, it’s illustrative fantasy, skillfully drawn.
Teraoka is at James Harris through Saturday.
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