Appropriation Artist Sean Go Inspires Possibilities Through Unconventional Paintings
When information is so available, emojis, cartoon characters, and visual symbols become the new alphabet to communicate and to express ideas and messages. Images captivate often more than long paragraphs of text, and the symbology used in ads, paintings, and billboards have so much depth, loaded with socio-political meanings like a loaded gun.
Go is a multifaceted artist whose work has gained international exposure steadily over recent years, starting from New York City and Atlanta to Manila, Jakarta, and this year London, with a project by DF agency in the Mayfair district of the bustling city due to happen in the third quarter of 2024. At his hometown Manila, Go’s exhibits are a frequent destination for art collectors, with the support of Secret Fresh Gallery and a cohort of Ivy League and investment banking collectors. His collector base spans more than 10 countries from Germany to Taiwan, as Go himself is a bit of a traveling nomad, having lived and worked in San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Singapore, New York City, and Paris. Interestingly, Go was not always an artist, as he had roots in financial services and consulting, working at Ernst and Young, HSBC, and even being a successful venture capitalist with his brother Jorge Go.
What makes Sean Go special? Why are his works infuriating in encouraging simplicity sometimes? How does he acknowledge his positionality in creating art? For Go, who has been likened to Neo and Kylo Ren, brooding with Rick Owen’s style and oversized military coats, his work shines color much more than the way he dresses.
Go’s renaissance revival and mastery of far-ranging subjects, along with his ability to get things done through an expansive network of high-caliber performers in their fields sets him apart from other artists. In terms of style, Go is like Basquiat and Jeff Koons combined, finishing his works with Warhol-type filters, with an audaciousness and sometimes humor of Dali’s surrealism. Go’s plethora of sea monsters, crazed bulls, and fighting angels are his ways of showing human experiences and emotions, and investigating human perspectives when it comes to the meaning of life, set within our values of the century.
Artist Sean Go’s works dazzle, shine, and bewitch with lighting textures so jagged and often filled with rich colors. His mixed-media projects open dialogues of sexual signaling in consumer products, his sculptures explore the dynamics and traps of social determinism, and his paintings document critically the human condition. Flawed and imperfect, Go’s works often mimic the reality of life. Beauty and optics in editorial campaigns and commercials often achieve an aesthetic that is impossible to achieve in real life, and Go’s works of grit and crayons often display more raw feelings onto the canvas, bringing into life characters from Marvel to Nickelodeon.
Go’s “Ballerina Silver Car Crash”, featuring Claire Cottignies, studies the relationship between a model’s many uses as an object devoid of agency, often fueled by the end-consumer’s need to be seduced and attracted to certain ideals that brands communicate in various ways in today’s era of late-stage capitalism. The film like texture of the work is inspired by Andy Warhol’s Silver Car Crash, which comments on the obsession of people with critically surprising and often sad events. There is so much performativity in today’s world, in the creative fields, in business, in virtue signaling, and Go’s pieces tap into these ideas with panache.
For Go, collaborations are his next main projects to look out for. Currently, Go has released a clothing collaboration with Secret Fresh Gallery, who he has worked with before on his June 2023 show called “The Fallacies of Fantasy.” Secret Fresh is a top gallery in the Philippines that organizes and manages shows of Ben Cab and Ronald Ventura, who are blue-chip Filipino artists who have sold works for over a million dollars each. Go is off a fresh start with his December launch of the Pickup Planner with PickUp Coffee, a unicorn in the Philippines valued at $130 million dollars – the new Starbucks, as they are compared to. Go’s second solo show will be in Secret Fresh in 2024, where he is preparing grungy Pokémon characters to appear in his exhibit “Victory Road.” In the Pokemon games, this road is the final road that all trainers have to pass before reaching the elite 4 and finishing the game. It represents how we all have widely varying decisions in selecting our parties and our paths, but common bonds of the pursuit of excellence and friendships give us all more commonality than one would think. It is an optimistic view of how we can own our decisions and claim fulfillment and peace with crafting our own stories, however different our story might be from our peers or family.
On the lookout this year is Go’s first collaboration with JAG Jeans, the most famous and popular denim brand in the Philippines, his sculpture collaboration with The Manila Hotel, a historic 5-star hotel since 1912. The Manila Hotel is a hallmark of Philippine class and elegance and is steeped within a rich history of working with artists in the country. Finally, watch out for Go’s art toy collaboration with the platform Toki, a marketplace for collectibles and art toys. Go will be revisiting classical themes of Philippine’s reverse appropriation of colonial legacies, showing that the Filipino people have more than enough creativity to flip the script on their prior colonial masters.
Go’s collaboration with Secret Fresh, “This is Not a Shirt” pays respect to Magritte while bringing up the question of what is real and what is constructed. It is a witty message that tells us to re-evaluate our ways of knowing and to challenge and question ideas that are dear to us, as they may be flawed. Go’s message is a bit rebellious – that institutional knowledge and common sense are often self-reinforcing even if their logic may not necessarily be “common” or may have roots in something more constructed – such as the influence of religion, racial exclusion, or social class stratification.
Go’s collaboration with PickUp planner features a rock and roll dragon and capitalist propaganda on how coffee is heavenly because it is tasty and also serves to increase productivity, which is what our current socio-economic system prioritizes. Go’s PickUp dragon is a piece of optimism and hope, and while it can be said to have deeper meanings, it celebrates PickUp coffee and feelings of happiness when you drink coffee. Simple but sweet!
With Go’s show history and collaborations, we can see that Go is much more than your businessman’s artist. Yes, his network in business is a force to be reckoned with, but it’s a function of his creative mind and willingness to explore disciplines that are so far from each other. Go has studied film at USC, under Doug Bush (producer of Icarus on Netflix and Heroes by HBO) and under Daniel Noah, who makes horror genre films with Elijah Wood (Frodo). Go also spent time at Peking University, where he studied business across international borders. During his time working for Ernst and young in San Francisco, he learned cooking at SF Cooking, the school of 2-star Michelin chef Daniel Patterson of COI. Go has also produced USC films such as “Swept Under” to support his fellow students and to pay things forward.
Outside of the classroom, Go’s steel resolve is shown through his boxing and MMA training camps, having trained with professional fighters from UFC, Glory Kickboxing, and Olympians including former champion Lyman Good, Brian Viloria, and current champion Kareem Hackett.
Currently, Go has 8 degrees from top schools which include the prestigious Parsons School of Design, the Fashion Institute of Technology, Columbia, Emory University and UC Berkeley. His academic pedigree spans business, art history, geography, economics, real estate development and law. These fields, while seemingly far removed from each other, have unique intersectionalities that help Go come up with creative ideas for both private and private spaces.
At Parsons School of Design, Go is working with the Alaia foundation and learning with Miren Arzalluz, the head of the Palais Galeria and the Balenciaga Museum. Go’s work at Parson’s currently investigates through reception studies the portrayal of Disney villains in the Golden age of animation on creating perceptions of what beauty is defined as.
Previously at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), Go did an activation modeling exhibit with Dr. Alexandra Schwartz at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City by Columbus Circle. Go’s seminal project at FIT was to coordinate a symposium on diversity and inclusion for the arts, in New York City. It explored how minorities have a complex relationship with opportunities and how tokenism affects narratives and the statistics of success in the art world. He also research appropriation of social class in runway shows. Previously at FIT, Go was a scholar of Jeff Koons, where he analyzed Jeff Koon’s rare commercial and critical success, which is often elusive for artists to achieve both. Go has even been called the Jeff Koons of the Philippines, because of his child-like approach to art and his almost naïve and super optimistic view on how we can take control of our own destinies.
Go is the founder of the Berkeley Club of the Philippines, part of the Berkeley International Office, and served previously as Co-Chair of Alumni Admissions at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Go’s strong affinity with his universities even after he has graduated shows his ability to maintain relationships over long periods of time and distances. Go also regularly exhibits in school shows such as the Xavier Art Festival and International School Manila Art Fair for both 2023 and 2024. In conservative Asian families, creativity is not a common path so representation in the creative space is a topic of interest for Go.
Go’s latest series of board games featuring large-scale 8 feet paintings of Snakes and Ladders and Battleship, among childhood games, are a nod to the carefree days of the past, where games were jovial and fun, yet had an element of strategy to them. For Go, his primary goal is to inspire others and to shine light and hope in a world with a lot of negative news and stories of disaster and hardship. While Go is cognizant of the global political and economic strife, often even commenting on them through his paintings and other art works, he prefers to have a style that is fun and whimsical to the eye, only revealing deeper intent upon closer examination. Doing so is a compelling part of creating sophistication. Intricacy and detail are only revealed to those who may want to investigate these topics further, but those who just want something beautiful to look at can get them too.
Go is someone who challenges the societal status quo to create possibilities. He has gone on a journey to Master several fields, earning 5 Master’s degrees when specialization is of the norm. For Go’ he hopes to represent hidden people just like Simu Liu does in film. Perhaps there are more accountants who want to become actors or painters. With his art, Go aims to create beauty out of discarded objects like slippers and has done so using recycled paint from “tsinelas” at “Agos” 2023 and “Elemento” 2024, shows exhibited by Arthouse and Search Mindscape (non-profit) in Manila, Philippines. Go’s art practice is very comprehensive and traverses multiple methods and mediums. Go hope that his works can be vehicles with historical importance when humans look back at the past 400 years from now.
Go is a man with purpose. He may look like a samurai, but he rocks and rolls with the attitude of a terminator, with a rough practicality, but here to try to make the world a better place, or at least stop it from reaching an intellectual and creative apocalypse.
