COMA is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by JD Reforma – his first solo presentation with the gallery – titled Acid Mantle.
JD Reforma’s Acid Mantle is a series of new paintings and installations that examine the rituals and economies of beauty. The term ‘acid mantle’ describes the fine, acidic veil of oils, lipids, amino and fatty acids on the surface of human skin that acts to preserve the skin’s microbiome. The threat of disturbing the acid mantle has become a coercive tool in the culture and commercialisation of skincare.
In these works, the artist has used skincare products and ingredients, specifically papaya soap, coconuts, and silk.
Chosen for their skin-whitening, tanning and anti-ageing properties, they have been distilled into their various essential elements – powder, pigment, fibre – and reconstituted into delicate paintings, textiles, and carpets.
While these works superficially represent skin and the various cultures and rituals surrounding its care, they also point to the less visible, more felt thresholds that our body’s mantle – seen from the outside – enacts on our interiors.
JD Reforma
Intramuros 4, 2021
papaya soap, belgian linen, Gamvar
36 x 16 cm / 14 5/32 x 6 1/4 inches
‘Husk’ (2021), is a suite of new textile works that consist of the material remnants of earlier works made for the artist’s exhibition ‘The Fullness of Time’ (2019) at Verge Gallery, University of Sydney. They are made by felting coconut husk: the rough, brown outer fibres of a coconut. The fibres are stripped by hand from the outer shell of coconuts and built up slowly into four or five layers. These are then moistened, compressed, and roughly rolled – a process which entangles and binds the fibres into a flat textile layer.
JD Reforma
Coco, 2021
silk, edition 1 of 5
135 cm diameter / 53 5/32 inches diameter
In Spanish folklore, ‘coco’ is a mythical ghost-monster or bogeyman; colloquially it also means ‘skull’. ‘Coco’ (2021), shown in JD Reforma’s current solo presentation with the gallery, is a large-scale circular, white silk wall-hanging, cut like the disposable sheet masks found in skincare. Silk is often used as a material in luxury bedsheets, clothing and hair accessories, as it produces less friction with human skin and hair and is said to reduce wrinkles and hair breakage. In this enlarged sheet mask, the usual eye, nose and mouth openings are replaced by three circular holes cut to resemble the germination pores of a coconut.
‘Mantle’ is a large-scale floor installation consisting of the detritus collected from the process of creating ‘Intramuros’. The word ‘mantle’ could refer to the mantle layers that encompass the Earth’s crust, or, on a more domestic scale, the architectural centre of the home (‘mantel’). This shared centrifugality is reflected in the placement of the installation – a transitional space between two others, the warm core of the exhibition.
JD Reforma (b.1988) is an interdisciplinary artist working broadly across sculpture, performance, installation, video, photography and writing. The meaning explored in his work is embedded in different racialised and classed contexts: the lived experiences of the Asian-Australian diaspora; popular culture and the cult of celebrity; corporate branding and institutional critique; and political dynasticism and cultural imperialism. He is also a humourist and satirist, a practice enacted online through the Instagram persona Keeping Up With the KPIs, a meme-based account in which the ubiquitous Kardashian/Jenner celebrity dynasty are positioned as imaginary figures within an institutional critique of the art world.
JD Reforma
Intramuros 1, 2021
papaya soap, belgian linen, Gamvar
36 x 16 cm / 14 5/32 x 6 1/4 inches
JD Reforma
Intramuros 2, 2021
papaya soap, belgian linen, Gamvar
36 x 16 cm / 14 5/32 x 6 1/4 inches
JD Reforma
Intramuros 3, 2021
papaya soap, belgian linen, Gamvar
36 x 16 cm / 14 5/32 x 6 1/4 inches
JD Reforma
Intramuros 4, 2021
papaya soap, belgian linen, Gamvar
36 x 16 cm / 14 5/32 x 6 1/4 inches
JD Reforma
Intramuros 5, 2021
papaya soap, belgian linen, Gamvar
36 x 16 cm / 14 5/32 x 6 1/4 inches
JD Reforma
Intramuros 6, 2021
papaya soap, belgian linen, Gamvar
26 x 20.5 cm / 10 7/32 x 8 1/16 inches
JD Reforma
Intramuros 7, 2021
papaya soap, belgian linen, Gamvar
36 x 16 cm / 14 5/32 x 6 1/4 inches
JD Reforma
Mantle, 2021
ground papaya soap
233 x 325 cm / 91 23/32 x 127 15/16 inches
JD Reforma
Mantle, 2021
ground papaya soap
233 x 325 cm / 91 23/32 x 127 15/16 inches
JD Reforma
Husk 4, 2021
coconut husk, acrylic binder
28 x 22 cm / 11 1/32 x 8 21/32 inches
JD Reforma
Husk 3, 2021
coconut husk, acrylic binder
33 x 27 cm / 12 31/32 x 10 5/8 inches
JD Reforma
Husk 1, 2021
coconut husk, acrylic binder
38 x 27 cm / 14 15/16 x 10 5/8 inches
JD Reforma
Husk 2, 2021
coconut husk, acrylic binder
38 x 27 cm / 14 15/16 x 10 5/8 inches
JD Reforma
Coco, 2021
silk, edition 1 of 5
135 cm diameter / 53 5/32 inches diameter
JD Reforma
Hearth, 2021
coconut shells
dimensions variable