Jerome Kugan's Symmetry

Twenty-nine-year-old Jerome Kugan, originally from Sabah, graduated from the University of Canberra, Australia with a BA in Commnications (Professional Writing Specialisation). He is currently working as a freelance writer, based in Kuala Lumpur. He has written for New Straits Times, Options/The Edge, KLue, www.kakiseni.com, and other publications. He recently won two awards at the BOH Cameronian Arts Awards 2004 - The Most Promising Artist and Best Music and Sound Design (in a theatre production). His other interests include poetry, music and art. He was involved in Reka Art Space’s second annual Open Show in 2004, in which he submitted four pencil drawings for exhibition. This is the first time Kugan has produced work expressly for an art exhibition.

About Symmetry:


“Symmetry” consists of seven digitally manipulated images of gay male pornography originally downloaded from the Internet. It is decontextualised, mystified and recontextualised, in indirect homage to the ‘found art’ and ‘collage’ work of early 20th century Dada and Surrealist artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst, by turning a “real” object with recognisable features into a “surreal” subject (in which the metaphor becomes the “real”).

The aim of this “surrealification” process is to interpret/explore some of the psychosexual workings of pornography, a medium that bridges human fantasy and reality. Using Windows Paint and Adobe Photoshop, parts of the original pornographic images are inverted/multiplied/cropped/relocated/filtered/remixed to create other parts of a new whole (or perhaps new defragmentations?), producing repetitively symmetrical images that are locked into rectangular grids.

This process of reordering of the visual components of the images into such tyrannical grids is meant to represent the interlocking gaze of the artist, spectator and the image in the production, definition and appreciation of pornography. Viewers are encouraged to look for the erotic, if and where it’s still intact. However, viewers can also look at the images as metaphors for other things, in which the subject of pornography is no longer relevant, and their “real” meaning(s) open to interpretation.

The images are given the names of heroic/tragic figures from the Old Testament. Perhaps a naïve attempt at restoring a false sense of innocence to figures that were once denuded? Or to situate the currently obscene within the nostalgically divine? Or a pathological desire in the artist for the pornographic subject to remain pure but still reveal the body? Who knows?