Brian Sergio sees himself as a “kidult,” which, in urban language, is a person in transition between childhood and adulthood. His latest one-man exhibit, titled Kidultery, at West Gallery reflects that: “My show is about images of energy and movement, indulging on the “other” aesthetics, which is, to many, a taboo, or deliberate images of perceptual stress.”
Sergio notes that these images are related to the ones he used in a past exhibit, Crapola. “The situations and energies that they describe are similar. They are about suggestive eroticism that is often represented in isolation, and everyday life,” says Sergio. With Kidultery, Sergio admits that his images of women in provocative poses may shock Filipino sensibilities. He explains, “I am simply magnifying its existence to a form of anthropological study.”
One is a large photographic image of a nude, Rubenesque, middle-aged woman sliding her stockings on her left leg, where there is a cut-out of a bird of some sort, a reference to a pun of the word “falcon” in French, “faucon,” as faux con, or false sex. Sergio adds, “It recalls the 1968 etching, “Morceaux Choisis d’Après Courbet,” by Marcel Duchamp, a representation of an unavoidable, complicit voyeurism and embroilment on the viewers’ perspective.”
Another work features an image of a woman tied in kinbaku (Japanese art of bondage) at the back of a car trunk, which suggests the thin line between a fetish for role-playing and a snapshot of a crime scene. Sergio notes, “These are examples of perceptual stress, making the viewer feel awkward or maybe having the same sensory reaction as, let’s say, watching a circus freak show.”
To produce such desired images, Sergio relies on photography, seeing it as the best tool to capture a dead memory or to document a slice of reality that just occurred. “I want to capture a certain reality that happened, whether it is staged or simply a snapshot of everyday life, and initiate a relationship between the viewer and the subject matter. I also applied gestural paints on some photographs to convey movement and to create an illusion of recent changes.”
On that note, Sergio believes there is still so much to explore: “I will still push the boundaries by any means necessary till I understand the aesthetics of taboo subculture.”
Documentation
