Cracks under the calm of The Still, Small Voice of Contradiction

Ask for a story in a few words (or none at all)—and TRNZ will tell you a short story in a few paintings. Terence Eduarte, aka TRNZ, has a fascination for short storytelling. As a former advertising creative, he had a knack for creating really short stories (think 15-seconders for short attention spans). These eventually had fewer and fewer words—until he moved on to tell tales almost purely through paintings instead.

In The Still, Small Voice of Contradiction, he captures fleeting moments in the form of familiar images shaped into unfamiliar forms. As someone who likes working with familiar things, TRNZ ironically feels like misarranging things has been his visual vocabulary. By reconfiguring the familiar into unfamiliar forms, he feels that the most banal and repulsive can be encountered differently.

At first glance, there seems to be nothing banal nor repulsive in his works. His signature forlorn-faced children, placed in the middle of nostalgic scenes from the artist’s past and present, seem delicate and innocent enough. But the devil lies in the details: nostalgia worked in delicately on some seemingly incidental but intentional ways. Familiar blanket patterns. Floor tiles. T-shirts with pop culture references. Iconic fabric prints. Pensive poses.

For this series, he wanted to explore some scenes from the past and the present, but tweaking some elements “to navigate the space between the odd and the mundane”. The end result aligned with his process; of being “heavy in substance but with a quiet ambience.” The initial feeling one might get from looking at these works might be that of calm and composure, but a closer look reveals conflict brewing underneath the surface of soft hues and textures.

The show’s title, loosely based on a piece of biblical text that he encountered, speaks volumes of the constant push-and-pull that TRNZ feels and communicates through his portraits. Familiar and unfamiliar, banal and potent, reflective and repulsive, all packaged in quiet little vignettes that point to other moments beyond the canvas. Keen eyes see that despite the seemingly calm surface of TRNZ’s works, a strong but silent undercurrent begs to differ.

Nikki Ignacio