Paper Dolls

José John Santos is a highly significant and respected name in contemporary art within The Philippines. His works are richly textured creations, often deceptively appearing as collages despite their oil on canvas medium. He employs a wide range of juxtaposing elements to develop his artistic intent. Contrasting a surrealist technique and perspective with depictions of everyday objects, Santos assembles and interrogates a simulation of life as we know it.

The work Paper Dolls discusses the apparent ease of transforming appearances, and even one's character, through a shift of clothing or a change of expression. While the torn and taped together fragments of paper have literal allusions to actual paper dolls, they also symbolise impermanence, and the innate human capacity to change when critically necessary. Within this composition the rapidly transforming images are not only limited to the pastiched people, but also to the other stationery objects which are affected by their environment and owners. The work manipulates the absence and presence of people through the suggestive way in which images are strewn about and combined again on the pictorial plane. An actual painting of a nude male and female torso installed on the surface signifies that this work is actually a dual portrait of man and woman as creator, as well as the created.