Time, Being: Renz Baluyot

After almost two decades of artistic practice shaped by constant motion, Renz Baluyot arrives at a turning point. The exhibition, titled Time, Being, is a breath; a pause from the external demands of the world. Baluyot enfleshes ideas that have been incubated for years, buried under layers and layers of more urgent demands. These works make space for a reassessment of Baluyot’s own relationship with time and how it weighs on the reckoning of the Self.

In Pendulum, an exploration in moving-image art, Baluyot inspects the way time is perceived. The poetry of the work lies in his close attention to the laws of motion: he recognizes the movements of human life in the mechanics of the clock. The video begins with the work of winding, setting the clock’s pendulum into a steady, repetitive course controlled by an invisible push. This rhythm is interrupted by the violent introduction of a sledgehammer. Yet still, in this act of breaking, the swinging motion echoes the pendulum. Movement is replaced by stillness and space, presenting a new means of measuring its value.

This act of redefining continues in the work Eleventh Hour, a sculptural installation composed of twelve patinated copper plates that hold each letter of the phrase. Traditionally, this implies a frantic state, a critical point marked by urgency and an impending end. But Baluyot defies this expectation by spatially deconstructing the word. Here, the letters are made to feel unburdened; its rhythm syncopated—like a sigh, or paghinga*. Taking from the resist-dyeing processes from his previous works, Baluyot masks the copper plates to preserve the material’s sheen, while allowing the exposed surfaces to oxidize, making visible its gradual surrender to time.

Across the exhibition, Baluyot continues his experiments with materials and processes accumulated over years of artistic practice. These acts of making become reflective: from the slow, deliberate smoothing of a santo's head, the decay of metals, the acts of concealing and destroying; they pose the questions that reveal the iterations of the self—who are we, who have we become, and where are we going? Apparent throughout these works is a certain honesty, afforded only when a creator is free to follow their intuition, to allow the process itself to lead, and to reflect without being demanded immediate answers.

In a system that demands constant movement and production, the cost of haste is often memory and history. Baluyot reclaims what has been pushed aside, presenting an exhibition that celebrates agency and the freedom to follow one’s tawag ng loob.

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In 2025, Renz Baluyot undertook artist residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in the United States, the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency in New York, and Rimbun Dahan in Malaysia. His recent exhibitions include Labas Paloob at Art Cube Gallery (2025), To Carry More Than Air at Galleria Duemila (2025), and Heaven and Earth (Langit at Lupa) in Kyoto, Japan. Baluyot has also received the Juror's Choice Award of Merit at the Philippine Art Awards (2020), and was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards–Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art (2021).

*Hinga is a Filipino term for breath. It is the same root word for pahinga, or rest.

-Carla Gamalinda