Maryanto

With his activist art, Maryanto has gained international recognition, a number of international art collaboration projects and exhibitions in important art events. His works come into existence from his deep desire to expose the negative ecological damage human brings into the nature and to the living environment.

Maryanto creates evocative, black and white paintings, drawings, and installations that undermine the romantic language of traditional landscape painting to examine socio-political structures in the physical spaces that he depicts. Through fable-like and theatrical settings, these landscapes are subjected to the whims of colonisers and capitalists through technological development, industrialisation, pollution of the land and exploitation of its natural resources. (Source: Yeo Workshop, Singapore)

Maryanto makes artworks that serve as a form of storytelling with the impression of theatrical stage or landscape setting. The work as stories explores and transfers knowledge through historical research, myths and stories combined with the artist’s own artistic imagination and constructed forms. The results are dramatic and romantic black and white installations made of paintings, etchings, rich charcoal drawings that evoke stories and environments. The subject of his ongoing project that commenced several years ago has to do with his curiosity on resources and its effect on a country and politics. In his daily observations of life in Indonesia, combined with his formal training in the arts at the Institute of the Art, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and his subsequent residencies in the Netherlands at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten and the Esculea de Orient programme at Casa Asia Barcelona, Spain, as well as his gallery solo shows, he is able to compare and explore the history of colonialism and its role in the allocation of resources. He sees “resource” as a pandora’s box; that a country with big resources could cause tension and conflict between the systems that navigates and governs economics and daily life of the people.

Maryanto recently exhibited at the “Discoveries” section of Art Basel Hong Kong 2016, the Setouchi Triennale 2016, Bazaar Art Jakarta 2016, and Art Stage Singapore 2017. He also participated at the Yogyakarta Biennale 2015 “Hacking Conflict, Indonesia meets Nigeria”, creating a large entrance piece, and the Jakarta Biennale 2015 “Neither Forward Nor Back” as curated by Charles Esche with an installation work “Temah Ruah di Wonocolo”.
(Source: The Artling)

Born:
1977, Indonesia

Education:
Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta (Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta, ISI Yogyakarta)

Residency:
The Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2013)