Stillness and Stagnancy | Renato Barja, Jr

In a world of hypermedia and short-form amusements, it has become rarer nowadays for occasions where one can ruminate in the stillness of things. Against the bombardment of sporadic attempts at novel forms to entertain and arouse, there are a few artists who remain steadfast to make room for deep introspection—especially in the remoteness of one’s profound, and personal experiences. One such artist is Filipino painter, Renato Barja, Jr. who, in his quest for finding his subjects, does not shy away from the despair and afflictions that latch on to one’s psyche and innermost musings. He has seemed to embody, over more than a decade of practice, the role of the artist as the interpreter of maladies.

In his latest solo exhibition called Stillness and Stagnancy, Barja presents a body of work that is as personal as it could get, but also hard to overlook. Here, we can witness an incredible and almost odd outpouring of melancholia through the depiction of mundane objects in a series called Souvenirs of a Terrible Year: chairs, kitchenware, an assortment of locks and tools, iron chains, keys, and nails—when arranged together create an ensemble of strange yet intermingling cast of disparate characters. To whom do they belong? It feels like they have reached the end of their usefulness or were abandoned. It is as if this peculiar gathering of bric-a-brac confronts a kind of yearning for their own identities, their purpose; and the tools—for their own masters or makers.

It is interesting to see how a group of inanimate things could somehow approximate the notion of being ‘orphaned.’ Desolate as this notion might seem, it is actually what lies within the heart of Renato Barja Jr.’s show. In the artist’s own words:

“It was a real struggle to confront the idea that both of my parents are gone. My father died nine years ago, while my mother passed away recently in the year 2022. It helped when I decided to go back to our house to try to relive some of the core memories that stayed with me, but what I saw were just the belongings that they left in place, accumulated through the years, that now felt as if they were souvenirs…I wanted to tell them, Ma and Pa, you left some of your stuff behind…”

One might presume a moment of consolation is in order, for this is art beyond the hubris of analysis and forms, and that this is art for the still-mourning: nostalgic and intimate. But whatever purpose for these depictions one might think, it is this intimacy with the subject that also makes this show significant, even necessary, not just for the artist alone but for those who have become quite accustomed to the impersonal and academic stance of artistic endeavors. This show is an exploration of the possibilities of deep, genuine, and even uncharted emotions. There is something about death that has made it a constant concern for visual exploration and narratives. But once death finds its close affinity within actual correlatives in the form of objects, and their parallelisms—of the life of its user and the lifespan of the tools and instruments, and the characteristics of their current state-–death and morbidity is somehow replaced by longing and affection, which are within the realm of the living, within the care of those who are left behind.

There is much to be said about how Barja renders mundane and humdrum objects, his compositions, and his inimitable choice of details and almost paradoxical use of brilliance in colors to capture moroseness, whether done in oil paint, acrylic, or drawings. But the real measure to their intensity lies in their arrangement within a given space, and in how these dreary objects came together like a band of discards-turned-keepsake. A transformation that might only be achievable through the kind of care the artist brings to his painting.

Such care is palpable. Such longing is conveyed, too. When Barja speaks about how they came together, he admits to the genuine affinity that each object might bring:

“The collection is more about searching through ordinary things, or in reminding me that these tools or other items once belonged to people of importance or are souvenirs of their lives…”

Consider the work, The Weight of Silence, which shows a lowly, plastic, white, urethane chair, where two, large pieces of rubble sit. It is as poignant as what it might stand for—the artist’s two parents, sitting still, together. When Barja went back to their home he found this chair, left in place, back in their lot. Which he only thought of as fitting when he murmured to himself, “Ma and Pa, walang alisan, walang tayuan…”

-CLJ