By DONNA KENNY KIRWAN

PAWTUCKET — Instead of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, Jhon Clavijo relies on a pair of mod, white-framed ones to portray his artistic vision.

The owlish, plastic sunglasses feature prominently in Hotel Clavijo: Insipid Kitsch, an exhibition of selected works by Clavijo that is currently on display at Hope Artiste Village. The exhibit runs through Jan. 5.
Clavijo, who lives and works in Pawtucket, is primarily a photographer. However, he has chosen to showcase his photos in a fun, multi-media exhibit that blends oil painting, sculpture, oversized wall installations, video and other props.
Born in Columbia, Clavijo grew up in Pawtucket and recently graduated from Brown University, where he majored in political science and philosophy. However, he said he decided to follow his muse and put together an exhibit of the many digital photographs that he has taken in recent years.
Some of the photographs are traditional, featuring dazzling nighttime scenes of downtown Providence and the East Side, and downtown Pawtucket.
However, many are fun and irreverent, including an entire series featuring Clavijo’s friends and Brown University classmates posing in the white sunglasses.
Clavijo said the exhibit features his ability to exploit the absurd through the use of conceptual art.
He explained that Insipid Kitsch plays with the notions of reaching for “fine art” and falling to the deepest levels of “kitsch.”
“It is an intended ‘put on’, at times aiming to leave the viewer wondering, ‘Am I being put on?’ and at the same time asking ‘Am I putting you on?’, which the viewer is left to decide.”
One of Clavijo’s photos, titled “Vanity of the Gods — and the Theatricality of Being,” shows a girl sitting before a vanity table that has been placed outside in front of a building with reflective windows. Clavijo said the photo spoofs the near-universal tendency of people to check themselves out whenever they pass by a mirror or reflective surface, while at the same time not wanting others to catch them doing it.
A photo of graffiti scrawled in a New York City bathroom that declares, “This toilet reminds me of someone I love,” Clavijo has titled: “New York – Where the Heads of State Meet.”
There is an oil painting of a woman wearing the white sunglasses that has been purposely left unfinished. Its apt title is “Finished, but Unfinished.”
The idea of a giant mural of the Mona Lisa — with the white sunglasses — came to Clavijo, he said, because “They always say that the Mona Lisa seems to follow you with her eyes, so she is wearing the sunglasses.”
A specially made 16-by-8-foot screen, titled “Insipid Kitsch Television,” features an assortment of digital videos that cover Clavijo’s work over a period of several years. “There’s a lot of laughter in here,” the artist said, gesturing to the exhibit space.
Clavijo added that, in essence, the exhibit presents art while simultaneously questioning what art is. Along the same idea, another of his projects is a book titled: Hotel Clavijo: Let me tell You What Art Is.”
Clavijo plans to soon have another exhibit of Hotel Clavijo, changed slightly but along the same lines, in Providence, and is also working with a gallery in New York City in hopes of a summertime show.
In the meantime, he has hoping to bring Hotel Clavijo, well known among the Brown University student community, to a wider audience.