Concrete evidences.

Jay Oré at Miami Dade College Galleries.Concrete evidence is the latest personal exhibition of Jay Oré. The exhibition opened October 5th at the gallery of the Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus. These works are part of a series titled UFO that Jay is being working on for some time now. This idea of encounters with extraterrestrial visitors is being caressed especially by the film industry. Some of the scripts presented a positive outcome, others a negative. Among the most memorable events related to this idea could be traced to 1938 when Orson Wells caused a pandemonium through his radio program, when he announced that Martians were at that precise moment invading the Earth. I personally cannot avoid remembering lyrics from a Cuban popular song about the arrivals of Martians, dancing. And just like that we have the extremes, the tragic and the satirical: the terrible aliens and the friendly ones, the killers and the dancers. A native of Miami, Oré is playing with the idea of how would be the life of extraterrestrial visitors in this city. He is ‘documenting’ all possible stages, beginning with the arrival and later the process of adaptation. He is situating them in every possible place of the domestic life. For this ‘staged’ images he choose a home environment where the aliens play and interact with a family. He also places them on the streets sharing with different kind of people, from children to old ladies. The aliens get all sorts of experiences, from the social environment up to sexual encounters. Oré is humanizing them; aliens are blending with the normal life on earth. Images in the exhibition are of course, manipulated. Humor is very much part of Jay’s personality so it is almost expected to be reflected on his work. Even the invitation to the exhibition was tinted with the humorous intentions; the image used was the back of an extraterrestrial personage leaving the imprints of his/her feet on fresh cement. Hence concrete evidence. Still the unaware spectator reach the gallery to encounter these images realizing later the intentions of the artist. Jay is quietly enjoying this manipulation and the results; he is capturing every smile and laugh of the spectators at the scenes that he ‘constructed’. Above all, he is enjoying the fact that his spectators could recognize that they had been tricked by his manipulations. Jay is using Polaroid images joined to form each work. He is composing his puzzles from these pieces into the final bigger image. The result is an image divided by a white grid, looking almost as a mosaic. The whole idea behind this exhibition is a humorous exchange between the artist and the spectator. Jay is playing at tricking the eye, showing the ‘concrete evidence’ of an encounter, in no other place than Miami, a relaxed and tropical environment, between the aliens and the people. His encounter is positive, friendly, and ultimately the aliens are adjusting to life in Miami! Wolfson Campus Centre Galleries 300 N.E. 2nd Avenue, Building 1, Room 1365 Miami, FL 305.237.3711