Jason Salavon's work is gaining attention, no doubt because his "Every Playboy Centerfold" series reaches under the mattress and deep into the psyches of the [much beloved] online geek-clique who have been passing it around. In comparing decades, you see immediately the centerfold trend toward slimness and away from chromed-up flesh tones. Salavon displaces excitement from hot zones to noggin here: you peer into each picture looking for some visual specificity, only to discover the strange residue of multiple acts of looking re-inscribed one over the other until they are indistinct. This is is sexual looking at the brain stem.
Salavon's other subjects address pop culture visual icons that have burned themselves over the years into our memories, like Conan on the right--mental distillations strangely present, yet absent. "Late Night Triad" blends TV talk show hosts together--and not just as still images. [In the above link, be sure to click "View demo of the triptych" to see a video transformation.]
Other work is more conceptual, like the "Top Grossing Film of All Time"; some has a distinct Ed Rucha-like conceptual photography from the '70's now in the Chicago suburbs feel, while strangely and beautifully invoking the feeling of color field painting in specific images. [Who before has wrestled Ed Rucha and Jules Olitsky into a single frame?]
"Bootstrap the Blank Slate at MOCA is his most intellectually ambitious work, and these mandalas his most flashy, particularly in detail.
I think of Salavon as is an artist turned loose on the info-graphic. He's employing new media algorithms to produce visual artifacts of the never-seen but long-sensed.
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