When scanning the graffiti-and-wheatpaste-covered walls in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one artist stands out. The striking tropical color palette and highly detailed, psychedelic renderings of the animal world is eye-popping. This is the work of Filipino-born street artist Jona. Part of why his art catches the eye, he said, is that his work is a direct reaction to the current downtown art scene, and he tries to contrast what’s currently on the walls.
“I want it to be very contrasting to what I see in the art world, it’s a reaction,” Jona said. “I see a lot of expressionists and they keep expressing their feelings and it’s very dark and heavy, but I chose this very light, zen way to see things. People assume I would make things dark because of how I look or how I talk and how I behave, but to me, it’s just like ‘enough of the darkness, enough expressions of how heavy-hearted you are.’ It’s a beautiful life and that’s why I create these sorts of paintings.”
“I see a lot of expressionists and they keep expressing their feelings and it’s very dark and heavy, but I chose this very light, zen way to see things. People assume I would make things dark because of how I look or how I talk and how I behave, but to me, it’s just like ‘enough of the darkness, enough expressions of how heavy-hearted you are.’ It’s a beautiful life and that’s why I create these sorts of paintings.”
When Jona moved to New York City in 2011 from the Philippines, he did not plan to do art full time. He worked in the restaurant industry but, when the pandemic hit, he was suddenly out of a job.
He turned to art to keep his hands busy and express himself and his career took off. He had made art back in the Philippines, and participated in one show at a cultural center before moving to the United States, but he didn’t think an art career was possible in Manhattan.
Luckily, he was wrong. Jona just had his first solo show in late May at an Alphabet City venue called Sweetie, where he sold more than half of the works he showed. Jona is recognized by the distorted and surreal art he creates, evocative of the late 1960s counterculture movement, which combines a full spectrum of color with paint that glows under a blacklight to depict natural and supernatural scenes.
“Just like you, or like the cat, just like lizards or insects, there’s always a center to us and we have two eyes, two nostrils, one mouth, two ears, hands and limbs.”
Common themes in his work include rabbits (his and his mother’s Asian zodiac sign) and other animals laying down or sitting—making it seem like his subjects are meditating or sleeping. His latest series is a collection of symmetrical, rainbow beings that mess with the normal boundaries of personhood called Bilateral Mandellic Resonances, referencing the symmetrical mandala form the pieces are shaped by.
“Just like you, or like the cat, just like lizards or insects, there’s always a center to us and we have two eyes, two nostrils, one mouth, two ears, hands and limbs,” Jona said. “I’ve been making these on very big paper with paint, then I cut it out and I wheatpaste this.”
He puts these trippy wheatpastes up around the Lower East Side, SoHo, and along Bowery Street corridor. The way he creates them is very simple—whatever he does on the right side, he will mimic on the left, Jona said.
“It’s a reminder that everything in this planet is vibrating and moving at the molecular level. these coexist with other vibrations, other creatures and other molecules. We are all much more connected than we realize.”
“I’m playing the creator of this thing that I’m making—that’s what I’ve been exploring. This is how we looked like, this is how we were all born and created. This is how we evolved—because of resonance,” he said. “It’s a reminder that everything in this planet is vibrating and moving at the molecular level. these coexist with other vibrations, other creatures and other molecules. We are all much more connected than we realize.” To Jona, “resonance” means to the vibrational and energetic interactions between atomic particles in all living things.
