Follow Remi Dalton and Jevijoe Vitug at OnlyPods. Like and subscribe to new channels of work that employ the translational essence of the meme. Watch as these artists labor on live-streaming platforms. We can all be heroes just for one stream. Username: ArtHistoryPrisoner and username: ArtHistoryguard empower streamers through a collaborative process of framing. Paintings are created that combine private, public and aspirational space in novel ways. Lags in wifi provide frames for social bonding from the hilarious to the devastating.

OnlyPods, a collaborative exhibition by Remi Dalton and Jevijoe Vitug is on view from April 14th – April 28th. This exhibition features a selection of paintings by each artist, video projections, and a large-scale collaborative painting. Dalton and Vitug examine what live-stream culture means to our conception of private spaces. The exhibition’s title refers to the popular internet subscription service OnlyFans. “Fans” is replaced with the word “Pods” which refers to the artist’s studio in which they live and work. Like OnlyFan’s creators, artists must delicately balance spectacle and sincerity to protect their vulnerable economic position. Both Dalton and Vitug explore this balance, as well as the blurring of the boundaries of aesthetics and ethics caused by social media and live-streaming platforms.

The medium of oil paint historically imparts heroism on its subjects. Both Dalton and Vitug use this aspect of their medium along with the translational essence of the meme to depict worlds in which the promise of going viral induces greatness and madness. Dalton’s Dream Room paintings depict the cluttered refuge of a contemporary romantic hero who isolates themselves halfway between the digital and physical realms. Vitug’s #indigenizemememoji.2020 encodes pandemic memes based on the socio-political cult of personality with a presence of indigeneity.

In 2021, both artists lived and worked together in New York. During this time Dalton and Vitug created a series of portraits, live-streamed with studio spaces, and collaborated on the largest painting in the exhibition entitled Sleepofreasonxxx (after Francisco Goya, after Manuel Ocampo.) Dalton’s portraits, the Twitch Glitch paintings, depict female Twitch streamers adorned in a
manner that is equally informed by early renaissance painting and fangirl culture. Femme performance and fetishization on Twitch is the subject of Dalton’s work, which celebrates the bravery of female streamers in showing vulnerability and angst on a male-dominated platform. #zoompintados, a series of portraits by Vitug, honors the tattooed indigenous ancestors known as Pintados from his country of birth and the people who are in his current circle of friends and neighbors in New York City. Portrait references are screenshots from Zoom which are digitalized and printed on canvas. Subsequently, Vitug paints on them in an indigenous mark-making manner using fluorescent pigments and invisible ink to create a three-dimensional effect to reference the supernatural. By tying two groups separated by time and space in which Vitug found support and community, he venerates them both.

Both Dalton’s and Vitug’s painting vocabulary are combined in Sleepofreasonxxx (after Francisco Goya, after Manuel Ocampo.) This large-scale painting depicts a streamer haunted by demons while resting during a live stream. Vitug’s work as a guard at the Met Museum brought him in close contact with the original print by Goya, which both artists were able to see in person. The artist’s reimagining of this print, which also takes from Ocampo’s 2017 version of the classic, depicts the isolation, heroism, and vulnerability of live streamers during a global pandemic. The fraught nature of live-streaming has been personally experienced by both Dalton and Vitug. Before this exhibition, both artists publicly streamed their studios for two weeks every night. This performance, which was meant to open the artists’ studio to a more collaborative working atmosphere during a time of physical distancing, challenged both artists immensely. Over just the short span of this live-streaming project, the artists were forced to address acts of sexism, racism, and humiliation.

OnlyPods also features video projections of recorded footage from Dalton’s and Vitug’s live streams. These videos are projected publicly from 7:30 pm EST to 9:30 pm EST from April 1st – 28th at Flux Factory. These videos document traditional places of seclusion being transformed into portals of connection in real-time. This transformation is accompanied by uncomfortable blends of authenticity and performance. Taken together, Dalton’s and Vitug’s works along with their extensive research present insight
into what the artist’s evolving role in a digital society might entail. Lags in wifi frame the hilarious and the devastating. Painting and performance become muddled into digital apparitions which take on new lives without their authors.

Remi Dalton and Jevijoe Vitug, Sleepofreasonxxx (after Francisco Goya, after Manuel Ocampo, 2021, Oil on Scenic Backdrop, 84″ x 84″

Remi Dalton (b. 1991) is a San Diego-based artist. Her work investigates how internet culture has blurred the boundaries between art and life, aesthetics and ethics. Her practice is centered around painting, but also includes video, mixed media, and installation. Remi received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from San Diego State University in 2019, and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Visual Arts and Chemistry from the University of San Diego in 2014. The artist has received awards and residencies including the Windgate Fellowship, the Art Produce Residency in San Diego, CA, and the NTC Foundation’s Emerging Artist Residency, which provided free studio space for 18 months in Liberty Station’s Arts District in San Diego. Remi has taught studio classes at the University of San Diego, San Diego State University, and Lux Art Institute. She has shown in multiple exhibitions in San Diego and Los Angeles, CA.

Jevijoe Vitug is a Queens-based artist that creates paintings, performance, and community projects as an avant-garde strategy to make labor visible, indigenous legacy, and the forgotten history of people of color. Jevijoe earned his MFA dual degree in Studio Arts and Design and Technology from San Francisco Art Institute in 2015 and his work has been included in exhibitions at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2005, 2006), Singapore Art Museum (2006), Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2009), Contemporary Arts Center, Las Vegas (2012), Staff show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (2017, 2019), Queens Museum, NY (2018), San Diego Art Institute, San Diego CA (2019). His performance projects have been presented at NIPAF, Japan (2004), Koret Educational Center at SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA (2008), London Biennale organized by David Medalla (2012, 2014), Flux residency at AroS Museum, Denmark (2018), Museum Mile at The Africa Center and El Museo Del Barrio (2019), UP Vargas Museum (2019). In 2019, Vitug is a recipient of the Queens Arts Fund New Works Grant and an artist-in-residence of The Laundromat Project’s Create Change Program. He is a member of Museum Union Art Workers, District Council- 37 Local 1503 and currently serves in the community resident board of directors of Flux Factory.