(Narcissus, oil painting by 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-nymphs because he
desired to make love to his own image.
Maybe the new Narcissus, as in "Blue Reincarnation," is destined to survive
by simply changing his role 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 and masculine femininity. There is another story about Narcissus fell
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 rich saturated
cobalt blue. The ultrahot, hyperreal red color of the figure of Narcissus 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 night sky,
deranged by a vision of some fierce fire ball. The disturbance of colors
create some powerful and awe-inspiring beauty.
 In the picture's background, we find the animals' silhouettes which could be
a memory reflection or a dream fragments. 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 foster his desire. The flaming color of the picture's
Narcissus alludes 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 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 of 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.
by Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb

"Blue Reincarnation" (Oil painting) by Paul Jaisini,
New York 1999, Text Copyright: Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Send private comments to author Yustas61@aol.com
        

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