Of Ordinary Origin Stories
In Anatomy of the Ordinary, Bjorn Calleja paints a familiar street as though it were the center of the universe, because once upon a time in this artist’s life, it was. His large canvases condense snippets of a recent past neighborhood life, filling them with warped figures whose bulging eyes and morphing limbs evoke both a cartoonish and familiar quality, in a triad of settings revolving around what is both intimate and societal.
Calleja’s pieces enjoin our eyes to skim over the horror vacui and seek the depths of each piece. We are awed and surprised by the courage with which he plays with color, proportion, and scale on varying visual planes. What is more impressive is the artist’s candor, as he expresses harsh realities playfully and unironically. We are regaled with a level up from stainless cuatro cantos to red wine near the neighborhood sari-sari store cum panaderya. Mundane street spectacles unravel, replete with sweat-slicked tambays grappling with a basketball in The Everyday, the same tambays we see in Trespassers as they, in penance and probably possessed with remnants of other spirits like San Miguel or Empi, walk in an early morning procession to celebrate Salubong on Easter Sunday dawn. A family is squished together in a semblance of a group hug in Dearest Dears, as a clue lets us discover the legend influencing Calleja’s name, and where Comfort Painting, a piece he’s known since childhood, shows up as an ultimate symbol of home life, nurturing, and inspiration.
Calleja’s fascination with eyes is by no means a vision through rose-colored glasses; their distorted view of reality provokes a feeling of imbalance, coaxing us to look closely and not take things literally because there’s always more going on beneath the surface. Each piece buzzes with restless energy as gardens of earthly delights populated by tiny figures with oversized personalities swarm across them. These little people are scattered across Calleja’s painting surfaces like intrusive thoughts, hovering between parody and affection, chaos and devotion.
Though now an artist with exhibitions in Asia, the Americas, and Europe, Calleja returns here to the community of his youth, perhaps tracing his personal journey back to where joy once felt uncomplicated. With a gaze that is neither mocking nor nostalgic but attentive to the essential, the artist catalogues the familiar into something extraordinary, transforms the grotesque into warmth, and makes a recollected community epic. Anatomy of the Ordinary reminds us that these corners of the artist’s world were never just corners but the very body of an eventful coming-of-age now dissected with the persistence of loving memory. Dali-esque and Boschian references aside, these are markers of a life experienced in full, with all its grit, sweat, and scenes once so saturated in vibrant colors. As we grapple with today’s disheartening realities generated by outlandish arrays of ostentatious wealth ill-gotten, perhaps it is indeed beneficial for all of us to see how the simple can truly be more meaningful.
-Kaye O’Yek
