The Stillness of Becoming

Since the early years, Condro Priyoaji's practice has always centered on capturing and transforming one nature into its opposite: the transience into the perpetual, the movement into the static. His process requires observing the fleeting and continuously unfixed until it eventually vanishes, like the interplay between light and shadow with its surrounding space, or landscape. In Absolution, Priyoaji painted the shadows cast by light seeping through window bars and trellises, creating patterns that appear solid and repetitive from one end to the other. Yet when combined with light, their consistency dissolves, giving way to a visual transformation that is gradual and constantly shifting. His other series, Ephemeral Eternity, references the Japanese concept Komorebi - the interplay of sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees – to capture the ephemerality of the shadows of foliage in Kawasan Bandung Utara (KBU) in Northern Bandung. At the same time, the work reflects on the accelerated deforestation of the area, driven by illegal logging and urban expansion.

Priyoaji's fourth solo exhibition, The Stillness of Becoming, is rooted in a philosophical paradox: how can becoming contain stillness? As he continues the attempt to pause a flux, to find a still point within it. Priyoaji extends his observations of light and its interactions with the surrounding environment. While his previous series explored the play of light in natural settings, this time he turns to its encounter with man-made elements such as mirrors and rippling water. He places a mirror at the bottom of an aquarium filled with clear water and sets the water in motion. Light is then directed at the mirror, reflecting the rippling shadows that appear on the surface. Through this series, Priyoaji examines how water, though seemingly still, bends light in ways that give it both shape and motion, transforming how we perceive the object and the world around it. This body of work continues Priyoaji's ongoing exploration of how visual reality is merely a reflection of light upon surrounding objects. Resulting in monochromatic paintings, Priyoaji's works suggest that stillness is never absolute, but a pause within movement. The Stillness of Becoming gestures toward the dualities inherent in perception: light and dark, movement and stillness, the tangible and the intangible. Ultimately, the impermanence of light and the constant transformation of both natural and constructed environments remind us of the transient nature of existence, how seeing is shaped by time.