Miljohn Ruperto: Janus

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Los Angeles artist Miljohn Ruperto’s video Janus addresses the fine line between states of being. Named after the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, the subject of Janus is the well-recognized “duck-rabbit” illustration popularized by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The ambiguous animal’s features twitch, its eye blinks, and a wound on its body opens up, implying an overlap of life and death.

Miljohn Ruperto was born in 1971 in Manila, Philippines, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He received a BA in Studio Art from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999, and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2002. His work has been exhibited at several venues, notably at the Whitney Biennial in 2014 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and in Made in L.A. 2012 at The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

Miljohn Ruperto, Janus, 2013, digital animation, 3:30 Image courtesy of the artist and Koenig & Clinton, New York.