Debora's Essay
“And As I looked, it became very clear that this five -and -10 -cent ship was in someway connected with human pretensions. This suffocating interior of a dime store ship was my own personal self; these gimcrack mobiles of tin and plastic were my personal contributions to the universe.”
Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
Octavious finds his footing sailing through historical assemblage art references, with a boatload of objects(toy boats, dinosaur parts). In the Proto-surrealist book, Veridicus Christianus (1601, The Cost of Careless Looking) Charges human pretensions with carelessness. Jones' constructs are blind. Yet they do not sell into oblivion. There is no pretense. They amble care - free. Sometimes they congregate at or scale a fantastic whimsical, fountain.
The use of dismembered plastic dinosaurs tests our assumptions about conceit. Wholeness can be attained from otherness, challenging conventions. Octavious demonstrates the timelessness of distorted preconceptions. Disregarded, our universal human faults and assumptions are conveniently discounted to preserve our self image. Refuting self - importance, Jones' convoy infiltrates spaces unperturbedly , is decidedly Jaunty.
A lot of the Man Ray (Cadeau 1921) Uncanny moves throughout each work, “unheimlich” or “unhomely”, Unfamiliar entities construed from disparate parts collaged into another, being. The instability of change can be discomfiting. Often wobbling, like our perceptions of what must logically exist, Octavious navigates beyond the unhomely idea, a name often given to what is new, with his waggish ambulatory fleet. And because his creatures smack of Surrealism à la Dali’s playful provocation (lobster telephone 1936), Jones' disparate object parts come together to make a charming whole. His beasties, an array of vessels with extremities evoke (1930) Hans Bellmer’s use of doll legs constructs, the humanoid exchanged for dinosaur legs and tails, which makes each stranded boat mobile, walk it’s transfigured walk
The conjunction of landed nautical toys with dinosaur toy anatomy animates the inanimate, invigorates our buoyancy. His work embodies the flow of fiction through its wonder, sprouts blends of jubilation. Each witty absurdity is a metamorphosis, converts our rational minds. We believe.
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