By Jason Ma

Over the past two years, Indonesia has suffered an economic collapse, riots and now civil war in East Timor -- turmoil that Baju Wijono foresaw and depicted in his artworks, along with the hope for transcending such hardships.

Wijono’s paintings, finished years before the latest strife embroiled Indonesia in 1997, proved an eerie portent for the bloodletting that was to come. In a series of abstract oils on canvas, Wijono presents the brutal context in which the rest of his works dwell. Using broad, horizontal strokes, he places the viewer behind rows of bars in a prison of brutality and carnage. Wijono also makes liberal use of flesh tones and deep reds that leaves little doubt of the image he means to convey: physical violence. Severed limbs can even be found lurking in the canvases. The first set of his works are replete with acute angles that look ready to puncture viewers’ eyes.

While Indonesia’s long history of brutality, including Suharto’s coup in 1965, undoubtedly served as the milieu of wholesale violence that underlies the exhibition, the preponderance of violence is overkill. Thankfully, it’s balanced somewhat by an exhilarating narrative of liberation, underscored by Wijono’s beautiful personal statement.

His words, which viewers see before the graphic images, describe Wijono’s long silence as a child (he could hear but was largely mute) and how he recovered his voice by fashioning paper boats that he released on a stream. The passage of each boat gradually unburdened the artist from his pain until his voice was finally liberated.

As if desperate for a rebirth of his country and himself, Wijono’s paintings move from allusions of physical violence and carnage to recreations of the fluid movement of the paper boats. The violence in the first part of the exhibit transforms in the second portion to become a life-giving power.

Marked by straight lines and ovals, the simplicity of Wijono’s work conveys the urgency of the task at hand: destructive rejuvenation. The acute angles disappear, replaced with smoother, obtuse angles. The dark, bloody reds are replaced with fertile greens. A fleet of white ovals, precursors to the paper boats, again sails through inner scars to liberate the spirit and the painter’s native country.

One work, Origami Journey, depicts how Wijono himself moved beyond personal torment, with the artist using paper boats and luggage to depict his liberation from such “emotional baggage.” Moving from one corner of the gallery to the other, through the luggage and out the front door of the building, Wijono’s depiction of a fleet of paper ships evokes movement and transcendence.

“Between the Lines” is on display through Oct. 3 at the Washington Square Gallery. 1821 Powell Street, San Francisco. 415-291-9255.