Exhibition | Renato “jojo” Barja

“How We Slowly Turn Into Strangers”

Among his contemporaries, nobody portrays desolation quite like Renato Barja, Jr. His is a vision that is both brooding and unexpected—an idiosyncratic take on melancholia that invites us to partake within one’s personal sentiment, as well as in his profound imagination. Empathy resides at the center of Barja’s works. As an artist whose eye is trained into his immediate surroundings, his images, objects, and characters are reflections of the struggles of his own time. And such was during a time of grave isolation—a byproduct of lockdowns and confinement during the past three
years.
In one of those rare opportunities to see the world outside during quarantine, he saw a man sitting in an open field, as if waiting or wondering, or both. This man sits on top of a barricade, which became the inspiration for one of his paintings, and became the symbol for his own personal understanding of a kind of struggle rooted in uncertainty and isolation.

In his latest solo exhibition, ‘How We Slowly Turn Into Strangers’, Renato Barja Jr. contemplates on this ‘recognition’ of struggle—be it personal, political, or spiritual—that stems from ‘waiting.’

This has become the catalyst for one of his images: the man with a birdhouse box for its head. He comes as a series of derivations—as a sculpture derived from the same character portraying different types of struggles against precariousness and confinement. He comes across as a persona who is ‘tied up’ to his own aimless wanderings: at home in the world, yet feeling empty.
This, for Barja, has become the character of composites—of several people experiencing the same weariness during this period of isolation. There is a dark, understated oddity among the figures that border on both caricature and the nightmarish. Yet the sense of alienation and absurdity lie evident as a result of the existential aberrations brought about by the pandemic.

Looking at Barja’s ever-growing body of work, we become observant to how portrayals of people achieve their transformations. As filtered through the artist’s mind and interest, these depictions become interpretations of poignant moments in their lives, achieved through suffering, uncertainty, or depression.
His trademark evokes the odd and dismal. His vision is attuned to a world where bodies, faces, figurines and personas break out from their own forms—-and step out—bearing their sadness to become heroes of imaginations.

Words by: /CLJ

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