On lightlessness and being: The art of Junyee

MANILA, Philippines - In the 1970s, while studying at the University of the Philippines, Junyee set fire to everything that he owned, save for three pairs of pants, in an act that consummated a slow but progressive, much-desired purgation. “I wanted to purify myself of all I learned from school,” he said.

Nearly four decades later, Junyee goes back to the element of fire. This time, he uses fire as a device to create rather than to destroy. His work “Dark Matter” displays two sets of soot paintings he had painstakingly made for nearly a year: black-and-whites for the outer section, colored in the inner gallery.  

Lying on his back, he uses a gas lamp and the soot that it emits to render these works, using the flame as a “brush.” He would cup the lamp in his hands — burning himself at times — and gesture against the marine plywood until the tonalities he desires for the soot are achieved across the plane. The result is a truly sensitive and ethereal work.

As banal and earthly as soot is, “Dark Matter” also alludes to something celestial.

Dark matter is that utterly mysterious, still little-known component which astronomers believe forms nearly 90 percent of the entire universe. Outside the scope of ordinary telescopes, dark matter is only discernible because of its gravitational pull, and not by luminance, as other heavenly bodies are. In his image-making, this is what Junyee wanted to approximate: a presence that could pull a viewer solely through its sheer invisible energy, rather than by flashes of its glow. 

So, while the artist lifts his humble gas lamp to the direction of the heavens, his strokes in return yield dynamic, almost ethereal image that recall such lightless, far-off regions of space where dark matter keeps the universe together. Out of empty, white planes, the artist transforms them into windows that open outward to endless hollows, at times framed by wisps of colour, but whose ends are beyond the physical limits of our vision.

“More than art, I spent more time trying to understand the working of the universe,” Junyee says. “I live my life, and I do my art in response to what little I know of what is out there. Dark matter, which science still knows so little of, finds resonance in my soot works.”

This suite of works marks a striking departure from what Junyee is mainly known for — as a visionary installation artist sculptor and painter. And yet, it is not a medium he is virgin to as his dabbling with soot dates back to the 1980s. “Dark Matter” marks the culmination of years of trial and error. This exhibition at Galleria Duemila is the largest gathering of such works by the artist in a single space, and decidedly the last exhibition of such kind from him, due to the strain and difficulty of its creation.                                       

But more than viewing the show as yet another high point in the artist’s illustrious career, one must see the less salient but key aspect of his image-making with fire: the longing attempt to tame what is uncontrollable.

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Galleria Duemila is at 210 Loring St., Pasay City. “Dark Matter” will run until July 28. For information, call Galleria Duemila at 831-9990, telefax 833-9815, or 0927-6294612, e-mail gduemila@yahoo.com, or visit www.galleriaduemila.com.