FAKE HAPPY

                The exhibition space, as the locus of temporary happiness, is the subject of Jeffrey Jay Jarin’s “Fake Happy”. Here, the artist contemplates on the days he has been living in a country where the world’s longest and strictest lockdown has been implemented due to COVID-19. Thus, when everything seems to fall apart, there is nothing else to do but build a refuge where one momentarily exists in unfaltering radiance. Bright colored walls, glaring images of outdoor and indoor dwellings, are presented through a series of paintings. These are common themes in Jarin’s work where the absence of human forms are replaced with life through plants that exist inside urban spaces.

                The celebratory mood in “Fake Happy” is eerily expressed in a bright and colorful mural; a wall of fabricated truths to alter a dark grim period where thousands had been left in poverty due to restrictions brought by the pandemic and the militarized government action. In another form of representation, a sculptural piece in the shape of a cake denotes a performative act of bliss as Jarin ponders and compares them to public health policies and state responses to the pandemic, which are but spectacles; most are futile.

                In the middle of everything, Jarin lets us into the privacy of his thoughts as handwritten reflections of the situation are presented through a series of journals. When one tries to make sense of things, we usually resort to putting things down on paper. What we can find in every page are moments of contemplation, anxiety, and uncertainty. An instant rush of emotions will come over those who will read them. These reports contain not only Jarin’s individual qualms and sentiments but an indication of our collective trauma through forced isolation and separation; suppressions we had endured in a time of crisis and difficulty.

                “Fake Happy” is a place of irony and where one is at the breaking point of grappling the social, political, and cultural landscapes at present; we weren’t ready to face this game. In a temporary place inside what seems to be a collapsing world, the last thing we might hold on to is the ability to champion a tournament of lies.

• Gwen Bautista