Blue Reincarnation ( oil painting) by Paul Jaisini

The theme of Narcissus in Jaisini's "Blue" may be paralleled with the problem 
of the two-sexes-in-one, unable to reproduce and, therefore, destine to the 
Narcissus-like end. Meanwhile, the Narcissus legend lasts. In the myth of 
Narcissus a youth gazes into the pool. As the story goes, Narcissus came to 
the spring or the pool and when his form was seen by him in the water, he 
died among the water-nymths because he desired to make love to his own image. 
May be the new Narcissus, as in "Blue reincarnation" by Jaisini, is destined 
to survive by simply changing his roles from a passive man to an aggressive 
woman, and so on. To this, can be added that, eventually, a man creates a 
woman whom he loves out of himself or a woman creates a man and loves her own 
image, but in the male form. The theme of narcissism recreates the "lost 
object of desire: "Blue" also raises the problem of conflating ideal actual 
and the issue of the feminine manhood of masculine femininity. There is 
another story about Narcissus which said that he had a twin sister and they 
were exactly alike in appearance. Narcissus fell in love with his sister and, 
when the girl died, would go to the spring finding some relief for his love 
in imagining that he saw, not his own reflection, but the likeness of his 
sister. "Blue" creates a remarkable and complex psychopathology of the lost, 
the desired, and the imagined.
Instead of the self, Narcissus loves and becomes a heterogeneous sublimation 
of the self.
Unlike the Roman paintings of Narcissus, that show him alone with his 
reflection by the pool, the key dynamic in Jaisini's "Blue" is the 
circulation of the legend that does not end and is reincarnated in 
transformation when autoeroticism is not permanent, and is not single by 
definition.
In "Blue," we risk to be lost in the double reflection of a mirror and never 
to define on which side of the mirror is Narcissus. The picture's color is 
not a true color of spring water. This kind of color is a perception of a 
deep seated human belief in the concept of eternity. The blue color of the 
painting is hypnotizing. The ultrahot, hyperreal red color of the figure is 
not supposed to be balanced in the milieu of the radical blue. Jaisini 
realizes the harmony in the most exotic color combination.
While looking at "Blue," we can recall the spectacular color of a night sky, 
deranged by a vision of a fierce fire ball. The disturbance of colors create 
some powerful and awe-inspiring beauty. In the painting's background, we find 
the animals' silhouettes which could be a memory reflection or a dream. In 
the story Narcissus has been hunting - an activity that was itself a figure 
for sexual desire in antiquity.
Captivated by his own beauty, the hunter sheds a radiance that, one presumes, 
reflects to haunt and to foster his desire. The flaming color of the 
picture's Narcissus eludes the erotic implications of the story and its 
unresolved problem of the one who desires himself and traps in the erotic 
delirium.
The concept can be applied to an ontological difference between the artist's 
imitations and their objects. In effect, Jaisini's Narcissus could epitomize 
artistic aspiration to control the levels of reality and imagination, to 
align the competition of art and life, of image with imaginable prototype.
Jaisini's "Blue" is a unique work that adjoins reflection to reality without 
any instrumentality. "Blue" is a single composition that depicts the reality 
and its immediate reflection. Jaisini builds the dynamics of desire between 
Narcissus and his reflection-of-the-opposite by giving him the signs of both 
sexes, but not for the purpose of creating a hermaphrodite. The case of 
multiple deceptions in "Blue" seems to be vital to the cycle of desire. 
Somehow it reminds of the fate of the artists and their desperate attempts to 
evoke and invent the nonexistent.

"Blue" is a completely alien picture to Jaisini's "Reincarnation" series. The 
pictures of this series are painted on a plain ground of canvas that produces 
the effect f free space filled with air. "Blue," to the contrary, has the 
reminiscence of an underwater lack of air. The symbolism of this picture's 
texture and color contributes to the mirage of reincarnation.

Review of oil painting by Paul Jaisini 
Text copyrights by Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb
New York, 1999
All rights reserved
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