What do the Olsen sisters store in those folders? … Silence… suspicion of the question we know by intuition is loaded with a trick. The Olsens, the Olsens…Mary Kate and Ashley? The twins, the Sunday films, the magazines. Fragments of information, shreds of multiple scenes arrive behind this questioning formulated, for a greater uncertainty, from the world of art. Hyperlinks, quote, appropriation, strategies that, superimposed, are perceived in this third exhibition by jorge & larry, in which the pleasure of the artists with subversion and iconoclasm, evident in this process of composing images, creating situations and environments based in multiple and contrasting referents, is confirmed. (…)
What do they store…1 is a group of drawings and paintings with a small format displayed as vignettes which might easily turn into a book/catalogue because of their direct and anecdotic nature. Although each of them functions independently, the addition creates a narration that flows in plural directions and senses, all connected by a common aesthetic midway among cult, parody and submission to kitsch. With a making close to naïf and a trash flavor, images associate and line up starting from simple and quick compositions facilitating the immediacy in reading. Collages are used in some cases, based on color interventions, different textures, and fragments of photography superimposed in different contexts. (…) With a studied “oversight,” of a bohochic style like Ashley O’s, 2 drawings are presented in the space, where the neat montage and execution reveal that there is no real carelessness: in spite of the pose, everything is perfect and clean. The “series” is articulated on the basis of a mixture of referents from the universe of pop culture and anonymous characters sharing the space with elements of dashing meanings set in equally peculiar positions. jorge & larry approach, from suspicion, the scenes built around celebrities, illustrating and commenting their real and/or possible histories. They show an almost gruesome pleasure in replying the contemporary blending through which their narrations interweave at times in a satirized representation and contextualized again in others (…). The notion of “celebrity” itself is exhibited in its multiple variations. The imagery displayed by the artists includes winks to the so called “high culture,” society and politics.
(…) To tear the almost physical fascination media space produces, the morbid relationship we have with the fictions swarming our environment is not the intention of the display by jorge & larry. They expect us to follow their line… go with the flow… the show must go on… they intend to involve us in the irreverent game they have established with the medium. In a panorama undermined with images so closely committed to social criticism, with the reflection on the present processes of our country which are now becoming archetypes too, they come out with a fresh and different proposal. However, these contextual referents are here: bulk of archipelagos, quagmire, confusion… and from here they connect, at the same time, with Vivienne Westwood and with Pitbull. The comfort and lightness in the attitude they take before art makes them special in our scene. jorge & larry, with What do the Olsen sisters store in those folders? Present us with a way out, thought and fun.
- Exhibited in the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales (Center for the Development of Visual Arts), Havana, December 2013 – January 2014.
- Ashley Olsen.
