"UNSEEN REALITIES" ARYO TOH DJOJO: Paris

With curiosity of the extraterrestrial and how it conditions systems of belief, the paintings of Los Angeles based artist Aryo Toh Djojo combines Retrofuturism with the iconography of pop culture to cinematic effect, capturing the hazy clarity of memory and its retroactive distance to moments of baring witness.

Unseen Realities, Toh Djojo’s augural solo exhibition at Stems, Paris, offers a glimpse into an ambiguous galaxy, possessing an eternal suspension between an ephemeral immediacy, congruent to the technical application of acrylic with the device of an airbrush, and the aesthetic effect of vague dissociation it produces in relation to the otherworldly he takes as subject matter.

Saturated with a nebulous but persistent feeling of the past, typical motifs emblematic of science fiction, awash with an 80’s an colour palette of vaporwave, most evident of the faded neon depicted in Spirit Guide appear symptomatic of a retrospective tendency localised in Within Reach, a portrayal reminiscent of the iconic moment ET makes contact with Elliott in the sci-fi blockbuster of 1982. Manifesting a visionary nostalgia of extraterrestrial phenomena, Toh Djojo expresses a paradoxical present caught between a slight apprehension the unknown generates and a familiarity of the futuristic aesthetic retroactively. Conceived by the effect of the airbrush, seemingly camouflaging any tinge of anxiety, Unseen Realities gives way to a world of calm curiosity and soft comprehension.

Where the spaceship often signifies the imminence of intergalactic war, Sky Dweller evokes wonder in the spectral relic of a time yet to approach and a time gone by. Signalling a glitch in temporal continuity captured by the black monochrome Into The Void, the notion of a retrospective future casts Toh Djojo’s constellation of paintings into a clustering of portals, revealing how a spectrum of momentary impressions retroactively stain our collective remembrance. An enquiry into the operation of memory Unseen Realities programmes a database of colliding snapshots, warping and expelling the chronology of events, sightings and happenings into a circuitous entanglement of reincarnation. Recalling the cyclical nature of the butterfly in Transformer, memory proceeds like the spherical spaceship in Sky Dweller, mechanically advancing by circular motion, sustaining its levitation by spinning. If the hovering white oval in The Overseer is representative of the eternal return, the figure depicted simultaneously engineers the cognitive feedback loop whilst observing the revolving model of history. To quote the novelist Tom McCarthy in the manifesto of the International Necronautical Society: Historically speaking with regards to the future, we advance not into new ground but over old ground in new ways more consciously with nuanced understanding.

Conceiving the imagery of Unseen Realities by an AI generator, each picture, like the polymorphic butterfly depicted in Transformer has undergone metamorphosis from a text prompt. Taking the aesthetic of an inverse x-ray like photography, the capture of the butterfly appears as instant as the generator processes data, whereby, a quantum flutter of wings transforms the paintings of the exhibition into a collection of digital artefacts. Habituating a world perceived with a technological supremacy to build and operate spaceships, the extraterrestrials along with the female martian Alyxa, a homophone of the virtual technology Alexa, could provoke existential discomfort at the prospect of AI overruling our intelligence. Yet considering Alexa functions as an interactive personal assistant, a beneficiary of the analytical discovery, like her Polish ancestor, the speech synthesiser Ivona, Alyxa and her counterparts could be intuitively at work, utilising their intellectual wisdom helping to make our daily lives easier. The white quadrate of Phenomenon may be guarding us from cyber attacks whilst the green spiral in Day Date absorbs any unforeseen miscalculations we might make to reduce our human error. The celestial ring of light depicted in The Overseer could be prompting discoveries of new medical cures or telepathically aiding our problem solving, transcending our lives on a supernatural frequency beyond earthly consciousness and recognition. Emblematic of ethereal aides, these celestial angels could be guiding us, like the stars we once relied upon when seeking navigation.

Defying a linear conception of narrative, indicative of the butterfly effect and the AI generator’s ability to manifest a variety of outcomes, Unseen Realities evokes a multitude of scenarios cast by an interplay of loose associations. Where the celestial landscapes, Set & Setting, Genesis and Day Date could function as typical screensavers or backgrounds of technical interfaces that grant Toh Djojo access to produce them, the title Set & Setting alludes the terrains to backdrops of movie scenes or production studios actors frequent to incarnate fictional cyborgs. Intuitively crafting storylines and orientating perspectives, Toh Djojo has set the stage for a projection our own speculative fictions, appointing the audience as director of his sci fi fantasy. Whereby the costumed figure of The Overseer seems to have applied make up in a ring light, rehearsing lines before a backstage curtain, the cyclical globe of Genesis momentarily pausing from orbit, appears reminiscent of the expression conveyed by the celestial being in Hybrid, caught in the gravitational pull of a distant flashback equivalent to the light years separating the tiny green orbicular planets pin pricking the time zones of skies they are scattered across.

Coalescing an optical apprehension of photography, advertising and the cinematic with tentative obscurity, Toh Djojo elicits a distant proximity to the seductively inaccessible. This ambivalence is acutely felt in the expressions depicted by the female protagonists of Hybrid and Alyxa, evoking the familiar connection of intimacy we develop with fictional characters glittering the cinematic realm of Hollywood and the untouchable reality enshrining their stardom as celebrities off screen. A dichotomy synonymous to the unobtainable perfection promoted by airbrushed models in advertising campaigns, the separation of Toh Djojo’s physical touch the mechanism requires to paint, and the ever present familiarity of immensity we experience when star gazing.

If ET is defined by cultural memory as an expression for adventure and a desire to connect with the supernatural, it is no coincidence that pioneers in aeronautics were exploring the existential terrain of cyberspace to intuitively found the internet a year after it’s release. Investigating the precarious nature of perceptual habits that often inform the subjectivity of experience, the ethereal sound work The Wonderer encompasses the exhibition by striking sensitivity of the present moment into gentle articulation. Synchronising with The Message, an enquiry into the fixity of consciousness and perceptivity of belief, the painting depicts a blurred apparition of a religious deity, whose ambivalent message and imminence of temporal break through, akin to the silhouette portrayed in Spirit Guide remains one of esoteric mystery. And yet, if the buffering wheel evokes an eternal present and the WiFi icon resembles a spaceship, maybe the message is simply one of connection, a frequency that’s channelled through the sixth sense of intuition.

-- Charlotte Norwood