With poignant scenes set against the backdrop of mundanity, TRNZ's new paintings inflict their own understated pathos amidst the spectacle of images. Subdued, unassuming, and low-key, the events and characters portrayed in each of his works seem to carry with them an unverifiable weight, waiting to be discovered; waiting to register against memory. Both familiar and eerie, the weight of each scene is detected through traces of autobiographical instances-maybe his own, or maybe even yours. It is this kind of personal yet relatable content that draws our attention to pictures and stories everywhere, and this is where TRNZ has become so adept in painting his images: in colliding his own against the many uncelebrated instances of life-until they become memorable.
Not all moments are momentous, and the artist seems to possess a deep understanding of this notion. TRNZ subscribes to that process-of allocating ordinary events their significant place within the narrative. He describes these quotidian, mundane, yet nagging and persevering images in his mind as 'fragments.' Contrary to memory, he explains, these are vague instances of which he's not even sure if they were his own. Yet they persist. So he combines them against the repository of other events through other available images found in photographs, found online, or elsewhere. These fragments then become more familiar, more universal, and their conflation stands out as a kind of collective memory-where memory is merely the aftermath and the effect of 'looking closely.'
These are not memories, but they can be yours: your own vague memory. Perhaps from childhood, as his painting style suggests. Perhaps as filtered within the tropes of anime, a drawing style which the artist admittedly grew up with, and through which he saw the world as a Filipino child in their dubbed versions aired on local television. The uneventful, the ordinary then becomes part of this unassuming depiction, of portraying the world (and painting the world) via whatever came natural as a child. And as part of popular culture and the whole visual landscape, this comic-cartoon like rendition might have dwelled in the world of the withdrawn, unassertive, unobtrusive, and maybe even the naïve-but is still painting, nevertheless; and occupies its rightful spot within the conventional scope of 'visual language.'
In its genuine timidity in both appearance and subject matter, TRNZ's works stand out against the attention-grabbing spectacle of other media. His emphasis is on the importance of overlooked details, of forgotten and random scenes or objects, as fragments imbued with cultural memory. These elements, rather than being mere objects, serve as potential 'memories' that can point to deeper meanings. He likens his works to collages, or layered montages-combining a collection of vague images rather than composing for a grand, imposing, and totalizing narrative. "My art is an attempt to hold these unstable fragments in place long enough for other people to feel the same tension, or for them to sense a flicker of recognition-like overhearing a song you think you know but can't place," he asserts.
By bringing together disparate fragments from different instances, these images create a spark of connection between the past and present, becoming a single moment that transcends time and memory, combining his own experiences with the rest of his viewers. Through these portrayals-the images, the humdrum scenes-they become more and more vivid, more and more sharp: until they become moments of incredible epiphanies.
/CLJ
