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This triptych is an early work where Jaisini had chosen the emergency
number as a decorative possibility for associative image-making. The artist may
like the subject for its close connection to matters of life, death, and
super power. He has utilized the idea not only for its symbolic meaning, but
also for a visual purpose.
In the triptych, side by side, coexists a depiction of eternity, ("1"
with water), and a briefness of human life ("1" with Icarus). The spatial
fragmentation is a visual mode that creates a close up view. The large
9, 1, 1 numbers are inserted and incorporated in the paintings' surface which
creates an optical illusion, as during a film development, when images
emerge from the background.
The left part of the triptych is No 9. This painting unites the number
with a mob of demons who were brought together by a woodoo dance. The picture
is willfully enigmatic but, at the same time, has a great power of not the
phenomena it depicts, but rather the medium itself, an integration of
the number with images visually.
An anomalous space relationship in the three parts creates magic
experience of flame, water, and fall. The three parts of the "911" triptych are to
be read as a unity from left to right. The layering juxtaposition of images
spins the work in a dynamic movement.
"9" part exhibits a dance of spells when dark powers unfold the
disaster. This left part of triptych with "9" reminds an arched gateway to Hell
with the head devil situated diagonally from the top left corner towards the
right foreground. This image is actually a large wooden mask with a huge white
fang. A blue razor blade pierces its nose. The demon's eyes are rolled
in from his exaltation of the weightless, ritual dance.
The artist disguises his personages of dark forces as monsters. For ages
the Last Judgments on the walls of churches had made much of frightful and
grandiose monsters. Jaisini applies the humorous overtone to a theme of
supernatural. In the center of "9," there is a nude female demon with
red, absent eyes and bulging tongue, which speak more of her own ecstasy than
of terror. The color of "9" is not of an infernal pit, but instead is a
heated color of the African sun that liquefies air.
"1" with water shows "Flying Holland," a phantom-ship, a legendary sign
of disaster for sailors. The ocean depths hold the remains of the
shipwreck. Skulls and treasures suggest of the life's and earthly possessions'
transience, "the momento mori" of a physical life.
You may question the connection of the three pictures and find some
interesting possibilities. What we have in "911" is not a universal
course of events. It is an ordeal of one man, who stays behind his creation and is
a survived prototype for his own judgment.
Neither the beginning, nor the end of his tormented existence is
constructed here, but the lesson of a legend is. To fulfill his concept, Jaisini
uses the personages of Icarus who is a traditional image of an inventor. The
portrayal of Icarus by Jaisini is a spiritual trial, the expression of
delimitation that can happen of just-awakened and terrified
consciousness of man. Creation brings the artists close to the destructive powers from
beyond.
Artists and inventors are familiar with this feeling of fall into abyss
that can also be a moment of rise. Icarus is shown in the triptych separately
from the treasure of the middle part (1 with water) as he is not a
mediocre man who used to be the center of
philosophical investigation as, for example in Bosch's "Death and the
miser."
In Jaisini's "911" the Four Last Things, Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven,
turn out in an unusual way. Icarus looks at the destination of his fall
with a weak, last hope, just as the Bosch's dying miser-man, for a miracle.
In Jaisini's version, no one passes the test of Last Judgment, except for
Icarus. He represents the creative kind, whose legend never dies. He is
the one mortal left to face his destiny, yet undecided, is it to be the
rise, or the fall?
The "911" triptych creates a concept of a life cycle that does not stop,
that blasts energy even through death. The work is a new poetic
representation of the human dream to reach powers which do not belong to the human nature.
When the limits are being pushed to a critical point resulting in disaster,
God is the one who is being called upon. In Jaisini's work, God is not rendered
visually, but could be the painting's concept, a code of numbers for
help, 9 1 1.
The triptych has its aesthetic durability of a new confessional style.
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