Raco Ruiz lets go of some of his inhibitions as he partners with Secret Fresh for gallery show “Clownrry”
You’ve probably seen Raco Ruiz on a leisurely doomscroll or in a video link in your DMs. The content creator made a name for himself doing impressions of Manila conyos at the gym and SpongeBob characters covering Taylor Swift songs on less-than-a-minute-long skits on TikTok and Instagram.
Ruiz’s carefully crafted characters and parodies of zillennial Filipino life earned him social media fame. But, more recently, Ruiz focuses his comedic chops on an entirely different medium.
“Drawing was actually my first love,” Ruiz recounts in an interview with Scout. “If you look back at any of my notebooks from school, there were more doodles than notes.” While Ruiz slowly builds the #conyoverse, as he endearingly calls it, through short videos, he creates another world through his art.
Running until Sept. 27 2024, Ruiz’s most recent solo show called “Clownrry” at Secret Fresh in San Juan contains all the ingredients of a quintessential Raco Ruiz show: dizzyingly bright colors, pop culture icons in a cartoon style, and some darker, more sinister undertones.
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The artist’s previous solo show “Surrealicious” in 2023, focused on the mascots of cereals he loved eating growing up. “Surrealicious” offered a trip down memory lane an entire micro-generation could enjoy. “Clownrry,” however, feels more specific to Ruiz’s personal experiences.
“I am the clown,” he laughs. If you haven’t noticed already, Ruiz inserted his initials in the title of the show.
“Clownrry” and pop art
The first things you’ll see when you enter the gallery are eight acrylic paintings of pop culture’s most iconic clowns: DC’s Harley Quinn and the Joker, “The Simpsons’” Krusty the Clown, “IT’s” Pennywise, and Ronald McDonald all of whom smile maniacally at us.
It feels surreal to see ’90s cartoon characters and mascots hung on the white walls of an art gallery.
“The art world takes itself so seriously. What if I just have fun with clowns?”
Besides painting pop culture’s favorite clowns, Ruiz also debuts a clown creation of his own: Razzl, the blue-haired clown shaking his head on the largest painting in the show. “This is the first time I’m showing a piece with my original character in a solo show,” Ruiz says. “Razzl is still very raw.” In the meantime, Ruiz still has a smorgasbord of personas to choose from as a content creator.
Creating the #conyoverse
Ruiz’s relationship with clowns doesn’t stop at “Clownrry.” “I feel like a literal clown online because the point of my content is to make people laugh.”
Inspired by early YouTubers like Ryan Higa and Smosh, Ruiz assumes different characters in his over 150 social media skits about conyos. There are Mike and Miggy, two conyo best friends who often talk about gyming, BGC, and their love lives. Then, there’s DJ, the beanie-wearing parody of a toxic Bumble date. Ruiz also goes historical by turning national heroes Jose Rizal and Antonio Luna into podcasters Joe Rizzle and Tony Moon, respectively.
The lightness found in Ruiz’s skits betrays the amount of work and prep needed to craft compelling comedies. “I don’t want to sound like a method actor here, but I do go full method,” Ruiz reveals. “My characters have whole backstories. They have MBTI types and zodiac signs.”
These characters allow Ruiz to escape and try on an endless array of personas. When asked about his favorite character to play, Ruiz admits it’s DJ. “DJ’s a jerk, and I find it cathartic to act as someone I’m not.”
He explains, “I’ve made many not-great decisions in my life. But DJ? He’s just unapologetically a jerk.”
The internet raised us
Ruiz, a proud zillennial, uses the internet as both his muse and tool. Razzl’s introduction in “Clownrry” feels like an extension of Ruiz’s social media characters. This constant back-and-forth in exploring different personas is a hallmark of online interaction.
Back in the day when ’90s kids like Ruiz used dial-up modems to go online, the internet was a Wild West filled with disparate anonymous chat rooms. These then evolved into avatar-based websites, like Gaia Online and the now-defunct TinierMe. Eventually, these avatar websites went out of vogue when the first social media websites arrived. Now, we show different sides of ourselves on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Tinder, as articulated by this Dolly Parton meme.
What once started out as an escape turned into the need to keep up with a brand and take the fun out of creating and presenting ourselves online.
Ruiz dealt with this conundrum as well. He asked his manager if having different categories and subcategories of content was bad. “No, it’s not.” Ruiz says. “You don’t look at ‘Saturday Night Live’ and think it’s a problem if they have too many skits. The flavor is all the same.”
Celebrating the beautifully messy and disconnected way of being online and offline is also another goal of “Clownrry.” During the painting process, Ruiz couldn’t put a finger on why his painting of Razzl felt incomplete. “I got so pressured to make things look clean.”
“But with the rise of AI, clean is instant for AI. It’s being flawed that makes art human.”
So, Ruiz painted “WHATEVER MAKES YOU HAPPY” over the initial piece. “I had so many friends say, ‘Wow, it looks so much better.’”
Embracing our inner clown
By painting himself as the clown in “Clownrry” and his social media skits, Ruiz invites us to think about our own foolish behavior. “People are treating themselves like clowns in the way they act so foolish.”
In today’s internet vernacular, the term “clown” refers to foolishness to the point of self-sabotage. It’s easy to label others as clowns without examining our own clown behavior first. At one point or another, we’ve all clowned around by sending a cringey text or fumbling a new relationship. Ruiz says, “Just gotta embrace it.”
At its best, creating ourselves online could be an avenue for self-discovery and exploration. We’re not exactly bound by geography and the way our bodies look. But, at its worst, social media introduces the pressure to maintain our online personas even if we evolve past them.
Ruiz found a way to balance this. His parodies on TikTok and paintings in Secret Fresh asks us to revel in the imperfections and chaos of modern existence. After all, why so serious?
“Clownrry” is on view from Sept. 15 to 27, 2024 at Secret Fresh, Ronac Art Center, Ortigas Ave, San Juan, 1504 Metro Manila