The True, the Good and the Beautiful
(for Teresita Barja}
They went into my closets looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes.
Imelda Romualdez Marcos
In Skeletons and Second Hand Shoes, his solo exhibition at the blanc, Renato Barja Jr. elicits once again from his personal memories, this time with his late mother–as Barja deeply investigates the allegory of shoes as a reflection of one’s status in life and his inherent sense of fulfillment.adidas factory outlet custom basketball jordan outlet adidas yeezy boost 350 nike air jordan 4 retro cheapest jordan 4s nfl custom jersey best sex toys for women cheap human hair wigs nike air max 270 custom basketball nfl shop promo code glueless wigs for beginners nfl jerseys on sale nike air jordan women’s shoes
It was while watching the documentary The Kingmaker by Lauren Greenfield that the above quote, permanently etched in Barja, made him reminisce with revered fondness and pinching pain the tough times with his beloved mother. Some twenty years ago, as her attendant, they used to sell second hand shoes with imported clothes in a rented stall in Cavite
It was a difficult time when Barja had to discontinue his fine arts studies at the Philippine Women’s University. Even while tending to their family source of livelihood, however, Barja never forgot his artistic calling. In fact, it even intensified as he would relentlessly sketch passers by and, at night, he would paint them on canvas. Barja did not yet have an art career and was, as he would describe himself, stone broke. It was also while conversing with customers that he learned how to tell stories visually given their distinct social perspectives.
Because of his deep familiarity with second hand shoes, he has been characterizing footwear with what the person has been through—his was worn out but with dignified existence from constant use. Everyday we step on them, whatever grueling ground our feet have to encounter as it takes on the contours, length and aggravated textures of the paved roads.
In the Desaparacidos Series, Barja pinpoints how the character of a person as well as the social and cultural context of his place is seen; how the struggle under austerity measures is perceived by the poetry of our footwear. Shoes take control of the physical and human space in which we live. They allow us to move in and experience the environment around us.
Sometimes, Barja gets so consumed by circumstances beyond his own belief. One day, as he was cycling in the long stretch of Quirino Avenue, he stopped to buy some cigarettes. As he was smoking, he met a kid who was patiently waiting for his mother. It turned out his mother was working as a guest relations officer (GRO) at a nearby club. Meeting her, Barja felt the burden of her sandals. He remembered their dire poverty and the overused strings she wore and immediately immortalized them in Desaparacidos on canvas.
In Desaparacidos, now all we have are the ghosts of their feet as witnesses to the struggle in their lives even though they no longer exist.
Even Barja himself could not escape his own scrutiny. As a working class visual artist who does not go on day-off, he becomes part of this series with his own painter’s shoes. Barja captured in evocative, dark and broad strokes the dirty and heavily used shoes he wears when he paints. In his magnified imagery, one is reminded of the inner workings of his noble vocation as a painter. Reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh who also did sketches and still lifes of his own boots while in exile alone in his room.
Barja is the master of composition that he would oftentimes enlarge his preferred iconographies to prove a point. Two massive paintings greet the viewers with the purpose of showing that life is in the tiniest of details.
Barja always had a fixation on mortality—a running death wish–that we should appreciate our loved ones today for it could be your last time to be with them.
He oftentimes contemplates on how non-humans or creatures are affected by one another. In Daing, Barja thought: what if the national sea treasure did not think it will end its life as a boneless dried fish to be served for breakfast?
During the intensity of the pandemic, he once saw a dying bird breathing its last breath before him. His thoughts are with its family and the probability that the bird was not able to say goodbye to them. In Dead Without a Whisper, he thought of the life of birds and how sensitive Barja was to the longing for a never-to-return loved one.
The same emotional instance also happened to him with his mother. Early this year, his mother was rushed to the ICU for kidney failure. She died ten days later, and until then, Barja was not able to talk to her. Ended With a Cry is Barja’s ode to her. The big and round flowers he wanted to offer her have become dried and wilted like in her wake. Nevertheless, his love for her will always be felt as he badly misses her everyday.
Overall Skeletons and Second Hand Shoes is a collective tribute to Barja’s mother who was the family’s workhorse to augment the income his father earned as a soldier. Barja, acquiring his mother’s work ethic, treks to his studio in La Huerta everyday to paint like clockwork. In fact, even during the pandemic, Barja broke protocol just to be present in his studio—that while in the most mundane things, one has to be productive, as Barja’s mother taught him.
As if the magnitude of these paintings did not satisfy Barja, Parasites of Heaven as the centerpiece situates him as an effective visual storyteller as he recalls the diverse multitude of people walking before him while tending their family stall then. More than 150 individual figures in resin with sullen looks dictated by faith or fate in bespoke grayness, capturing their anxiousness, as if emerging from the flood. Such continuity in visual language was picked up from his previous exhibit.
Depicting something similar to a religious procession, in Parasites of Hell, Barja seems unperturbed and does not leave anyone he graphically knows: The gruesome butcher from the Bacoor market in pig’s blood, the corporate lackey who is a slave to the bundy clock, even the depressed clown Barja accidentally met selling balloons to make up for his lost shows during the lockdown makes an appearance. His ice vendor neighbor is present, as well as the struggling artist who peddles his paintings to get by is walking here. And since we are still in the pandemic, nurses in PPE suits and a funeral of a loved one make sordid representations.
As a show of force, Barja takes a pun at life and the people who are trapped by grim-forced circumstances. Mixing philosophical parables with surreal realism, Barja summarizes that we are all living-dead looking upward for salvation. One would be intrigued that you could even be among the throng as we find that even rats in Barja’s studio were specially casted for this exhibition.
The Outsider Looking In
For Barja, the artist is the observant chronicler in society as his mentor Bobi Valenzuela kept on reminding him when he was still alive. As Barja was preparing for this exhibition, his mother died and coronavirus was still lurking, he just had to continue painting life happening around him.
Skeletons and Second Hand Shoes proves how Barja continues his lineage from social realism. As he attempts to be preoccupied with the contemporariness of his brushstrokes, expect Barja to churn out framed narratives of our own times.
-Jay Bautista
Works
DAING
Documentation
