installation

28
Oct
2022
Herlambang Bayu Aji

Herlambang Bayu Aji

Herlambang Bayu Aji is originally from Indonesia, but works and lives since 2010 in Berlin, Germany. He works with various techniques and art genres such as shadow puppets, paintings, education art, installation and graphic art. 

Herlambang Bayu Aji developed a strong interest in the traditional Indonesian shadow puppet theatre. Shadow puppet performance, also known as shadow puppetry or shadow play, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment, found from as far as to the West as Turkey and all over Asia. The narratives and these performances are often humorous and entertaining, and can be regarded as a kind of societal-critical cabaret.

Next to art exhibitions, the artist also uses his storytelling and performance skills on various art workshops and theater performances, as entertainment as well as education for children and adults, many times in collaboration with other artists.

Since 2016 he is working on a series of works titled Animalgination. The title is rooted in the two words “animal” and “imagination”, and as such is the output of his plays and imagination of new animals which do not exist in real life. 

The artist believes that everything is changing. The climate is changing and sooner or later forcing nature to change as well. The gobal warming threatens plants, land creatures and aquatic animals with extinction and pushes the environment to adapt those changes in many ways. Unusual attitudes of animals, awaking small plants or microorganisms in the land which have been covered by ice for thousands of years and even mutated viruses.

Animalgination provides the opportunity to create fictional forms of animals, like an elephant with a rabbit’s body and a crocodile’s tail, a flying cow with butterfly wings and a mackerel’s head, or a pig with an eel’s tail. The series symbolises, that every single person is changing during their life. These changes influence the people around that person and in turn is influenced by them as well. There are no absolute criteria to define identities, as identities are fluid and interdependent.

Animalgination is executed in linocut using oil paints on paper, painting with acrylic on canvas and an installation of paintings, papercuts, paper mâché, sounds and various natural materials.

Born:
21 May, 1982 in Solo/Surakarta, Indonesia

Education:
Master of Arts, Institute for Art in Context, University of Arts, Berlin
Bachelor of Arts, Sebelas Maret University, Surakarta 

Artworks by Herlambang Bayu Aji

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28
Oct
2022
Dadang Christanto

Dadang Christanto

Dadang Christanto has spent his career honouring the countless victims of political violence and crimes against humanity. His work expresses the suffering of victims and lays bare the anguish and grief that is endured in silence by those left behind. Despite the raw socio-political nature of his work, Christanto continues to produce art which pleads for compassion, regardless of differing faiths and political beliefs.

Dadang Christanto is an internationally acclaimed artist who has been curated into major art events worldwide including the Sydney Biennale (2010), the Venice Biennale (2003), Yogyakarta Biennial, Indonesia (2003), Kwangju Biennale, South Korea (2000), the Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil (1998) and the first and third Asia-Pacific Triennials of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (1993 & 1999). His work is held in major public and private collections around the globe.

The series of heads exhibited in ‘austral-asia zero three’ (Sherman Galleries, 2003) and shown previously at the Alliance Française Gallery in Yogyakarta, refer to the relentless cruelty of humankind among those of different faiths or political systems. The disappearance of multitudes of Indonesian political dissidents during the mid-1960s purges, when Dadang’s father was lost without trace, is a recurring theme in the artist’s oeuvre.

Born:
Central Java in 1957

Education
1975–77 Pawiyatan Sanggarbambu, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (painting)
1975–79 Sekolah Menengah Seni Rupa (SMSR), Yogyakarta, Indonesia (painting)
1980–86 Indonesian Fine Arts Institute (ISI), Yogyakarta, Indonesia
1999–03 Lecturer, School of Art and Design, Northern Territory University, Darwin
2004 Lecturer, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Artworks by Dadang Christanto

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28
Oct
2022
Abdi Setiawan

Abdi Setiawan

Abdi Setiawan’s work is installation-based, and features half or life-size sculptures of everyday Indonesians in various social settings. A very skillful wood carver, he makes mainly wooden sculptures along with fibre glass hand-painted unique replicas or editions. His rendering of the figures are not only realistic but also infused with humorous satire.

Born:
29 Desember 1971, Pariaman, Sumatera Barat, Indonesia

Education:
ISI Yogyakarta, Jurusan Seni Kriya, 2003

Abdi Setiawan’s sculptures return to the skill of wood carving while deploying the artist’s entire imagination and perception to depict the Indonesian human figure. The work takes form as a spatial arrangement, which presents the atmosphere of a city corner such as a waiting room, bus terminal or shopping mall; a representation of a fragment of the activities of city dwellers – which wait, come and go – just wryly. The realistic rendering of the figures pokes us with satire so that we smile away our embarrassment in recognising our own behaviour reflected. Today’s life and culture are those of the city – with all its complexity of problems: population explosion, insufficient dwelling space, transportation, excessive consumption, crime and poverty. The advancement of modernity and its related humanitarian problems are becoming obvious in urban life. Direct involvement in attempt to familiarise himself with the atmospheres of certain corners of the city as well as the characters of the people there, almost always prevails in Setiawan’s process of making works. Setiawan understands the emotional experiences that have their shares in shaping the characters of the figures he intends to offer by means of his sculptures. However, in the making and finishing of his works the artist transcends the experiences and observations. He knows he needs to add his personal interpretations and judgments to the various recorded physiognomic data of his figures. He reclaims his humanitarian intention and interest to critically understand what is going on around him. And he has to deal with discovering and defining the various formal aspects in his works so as to contain all his ideas and thoughts. Abdi Setiawan carefully calculates the elements necessary to represent in his sculpture figures. The teak wood he carves roughly so as to produce unlevelled surface. The acrylic colours enforced to mix on the surface of the polyester casts of his wood sculptures are effecting detailed accessories and clothing, and through gestures and poses (arms crossed, gripping a hand phone), facial expressions, gazes and glances – all elements which add to the rich physiognomic images in his works. Tattoos, clothing patterns and brands, graphical T-shirt imprints and other attributes from popular culture make strong references to art history. Not always Setiawan feels the need to give his figures life sizes. He has already arrived at the plane where he gives prominence to rich physiognomic images rather than merely anatomic precisions. – Enin Supriyanto

Artworks by Abdi Setiawan

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28
Oct
2022
Maryanto

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)

Born:
1977, Indonesia

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

Residency:
The Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2013)

Artworks by Maryanto

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28
Oct
2022
Agung Kurniawan

Agung Kurniawan

Agung Kurniawan is one of the most important contemporary artists of Indonesia. He is an artist who works with a variety of media. Agung Kurniawan has developed his artistic work within the field of concrete socio-cultural activism; he believes an artist has more and larger social responsibilities than simply producing artistic work. His traditional medium is drawing, but lately he works actively with performance art and videography. Although he works with performance art, he refuses to be called as a performer, and preferred to call himself as the director of the crowds in stead. Both as a studio artist and an art activist, he takes up clear positions and his approach often leads him either down to street level or to intervening in bureaucratic structures.

Agung Kurniawan’s work is reputed to be fairly “coarse” due to themes of violence, controversial politics and taboo subjects. The artist started out with book illustrations, drawings and comics, which offered a harsh, often satirical critique of Indonesian society at that time. With his drawing Happy Victim (1996), depicting people hanging upside down while laughing cheerfully, he won a 1996 Philip Morris Art Award and gained international recognition.

His famous trellis works series started in 2006. The series was inspired by an old family photo album from 1974, consisting of a photo diary of the artist’s mother during the last days of her dying father. Agung tried to recreate the personal as well collective memories by working the panels as a kind of comic book where the trellises are the contours of the figures and the shadows cast the blurred memory.

Agung Kurniawan co-founded “Indonesian Visual Art Archive” (IVAA) and co-owner of Kedai Kebun Forum (KKF) in Yogyakarta. His works are to be found worldwide mostly in museums e.g. Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Van Abbe Museum (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), Singapore Art Museum, as well as in private collection. His recent works include his performance in The Netherlands “Remember Day Parade and after”, during the so-called transHISTORY (Arnhem June 2016) and his video art during the Europalia Festival 2017 (Paleis voor Schone Kunsten / BOZAR / Centre for Fine Art Brussels, Belgium).

Artist’s Statement 2015 (in Bahasa Indonesia, freely translated)

– Tidak ada yang lebih berharga dari seni, kalau ada itupun pasti palsu (Nothing is more truthful than art, if there is any, then it is false)
– Cinta itu sementara, kesepian itu abadi (Love is temporary, Loneliness is forever)
– Kemiskinan adalah ibu tiri seni kontemporer (Poverty is the stepmother of contemporary art)

Born:
14 March, 1968 in Jember, Jawa Timur (East Java), Indonesia

Education:
Archeology, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (not graduated)
Graphic Art Faculty, Indonesian Fine Arts Institute (ISI), Yogyakarta, Indonesia (not graduated)

Artworks by Agung Kurniawan

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