Local logos appropriated, altered

In "Who Owns the Future?" software engineer, humanist and musician Jaron Lanier writes: "Expensive art is essentially a private form of currency traded among the very rich. … The art has to be stylistically distinct and available in suitable small runs … as instantly recognizable as a hundred-dollar bill."

This is why artfully filtered Instagram photos of your lunch will probably never be auctioned at Christie’s, but at the same time make you feel good when they’re met with community affirmations, likes and reposts. They’re gifts, digital "omiyage," a means of connecting us to one another and creating value out of simple interactions that ignore any underlying technical complexity.

The same goes for the local products we consume every day, bring with us when we travel, and send visitors home with. The brands associated with our favorite malasada, cream puff or mochi create complex relationships between local pride, nostalgia and cultural history inherent in every bite.

We have emotional connections to the logos for Liliha, Leonard’s and Napoleon’s bakeries, Hawaiian Sun beverages, Hurricane Popcorn and Bubbies Ice Cream.

Lanier strips the art market down to its rawest functionality, pushing it toward commercial communication. In doing so he raises issues of art-making as labor, the artists’ pursuit of unique relationships to their materials, and the art object as a medium of exchange for members of a certain social class.

So what does it mean when Jared Yamanuha, working with a swivel-head X-Acto knife and without a template, practically dissolves the Liliha logo in a hypnotic pattern of nested floral or sea anemone motifs? Or when he erodes the Big Island’s Two Ladies Kitchen logo with elaborate chains of simple elements that connect like parts of a lei?

And what about his treatment of the Longs circular, that indispensable guide to sales on Lion Coffee, roach traps and Vienna sausage? In his solo show, "Omiyage," showing at In4mation, Yamanuha cuts away pieces of the image to release an arabesque network of butterflies and flowers that eat away at the neat grid of commodities.

His fundamental gesture is one of removal, but not so much that you don’t recognize the source image that provides a parallel foundation of color and form to "fill" the new spaces of diamonds, starbursts, licks of flame and biological fractal patterns that emerge. The result is a three-way relationship between formal patterns of figure and ground, and an additional layer of communication and meaning provided by the logo itself.

Yamanuha simultaneously destroys and beautifies these brands, trampling copyright while extending their reach — literally making us stare harder at them than under normal circumstances. Whether you see contemporary art or a corporate agenda is ambiguous.

Reading Yamanuha’s work in "Omiyage" is like a trivia game where you race to identify the logos before anyone else. It also leverages the mindshare of Hawaii’s treasured brands, which are celebrated as examples of regionalism. The pleasure of (finally!) recognizing the gorgeously camouflaged Liliha Bakery logo proves that, yes, you’re a veteran, old-school, original gangster insider; give yourself a fist bump.

But isn’t that just narcissism? And yet the politics of emphasizing the local over the imported are real, even at the level of a snack or dessert … because that magical relationship between graphic design, social scenario and flavor-in-your-mouth is the essence of consumerism.

Though dormant seeds of critique are buried in Yamanuha’s work, so are those of superficiality. Here I agree with fellow critic Jamie Hamilton, who questions the depth or significance that the artist can reach through this relationship of material, technique and brands as content.

I would supplement her comparative reference to Ellen Gallagher (who comparably alters African American pop culture imagery) by also linking to Hawaii’s own Kapulani Landgraf, whose photo-modification technique creates a far tighter bond between geometric pattern, language and the cultural specificity of desecrated Hawaiian lands.

Though Jared Yamanuha probably wasn’t thinking along these lines when he first started experimenting with intensely pattern-oriented image manipulation, he knew that playing the mainstream art game would require a simultaneous divergence from and loyalty to local visual culture.

Consider the populist commercial venue where his work is showing, and his style’s resemblance to the insanely complex anti-counterfeit patterns integrated with the graphic design of high-value currency bills. Then check out all those red "sold" dots next to the work. Art always makes a great gift!