Jason Salavon Review

Installation view, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC, Mar 2010

Jason Salavon became famous for digitally fusing hundreds of like images—such as Playboy centerfolds or high-school yearbook photos—into a single visual “average.” In his recent work, Salavon largely turns away from pop culture and toward periods of art history that parallel our present.

The 17th-century Dutch Golden Age provides a particularly rich source of material. Two digital prints of skulls riff on the vanitas genre of still-life, which reminds viewers of mortality. Their simple symbol is complicated by the fact that it represents the visual average of human, baboon, bear and boar skulls. Salavon goes beyond digital art’s “how’d they do that?” cool factor to ask how one should reflect on the mortality of a virtual being. This period in art history also spread the genre of self-portraiture, which leads the artist to contemplate his own digital existence in Spigot (Babbling Self-Portrait). The installation pulls text and dates from his Google searches into a multimedia display. With or without our knowledge, he reminds viewers, our online queries reveal a good deal of information about us.

The artist also applies his averaging motif to portraits by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Anthony van Dyck and Diego Velázquez, creating a digital aggregate of each artist’s works. In the resulting chiaroscuro prints, dark backgrounds surround central fleshy masses—capturing the mood of a time defined by a tension between earthly goods and spiritual concerns. Together they evoke the 17th century’s conflict between Christianity and the secular materialism associated with a rising merchant class--a characteristic that resonates with a contemporary consumer culture rocked by recession  and religion.

Published in Time Out Chicago on April 1, 2010.