Artworks by Yon Indra, Gusmen Heriadi, Zulkarnaini and Saftari
at Biasa Art Space
Jl. Raya Seminyak 34, Seminyak.
Tel: 8475766
For their current exhibition, entitled ‘4 Leaps’, the Biasa Art Space offered a challenging proposal to four young West Sumatran artists, who have all studied and graduated from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) in Yogyakarta. The gallery offered the artists a symbolic ‘space’ which would encourage exploration beyond their own personal forms of expression. To take a leap outside the personal comfort zone of each artist, which is often restricted within commercial successes or market expectations. In short, the gallery asked the artists to surprise them, and the gallery’s audience. With out a doubt, the four young artists, namely Yon Indra, Gusmen Heriadi, Zulkarnaini and Saftari, have all succeeded spectacularly with the challenge.
Yon Indra was born in October 1971. His work appears influenced by 1960s ‘Op Art’, yet, in artworks such as ‘Dimensi Ruang Seri Lingkaran 3 and 4’, Yon is concerned with creating two-dimensional works that offer a three-dimensional visualization. “What I want”, Yon says, “is a flat field, a plane, which contains some real space”. Yon works with two-dimensional graphic designs which are capable of generating an optical sensation of space, but, the designs are built-up in layers of Plexiglas, so a ‘real’ dimensional ‘space’ is created. It is the combination of the viewer’s moving and static eye that lies at the heart of the works’ power to fascinate and attract total attention.
Gusmen Heriadi was born in August 1974. He creates gigantic, spectacular, glossy white Fiberglass sculptures of human limbs, such as hands, feet and fingers. The sculptures have an obvious ‘Pop Art’ heritage, yet, these are the first three-dimensional works Gusmen has created. He is more involved in his work as a painter, and admits that making the three-dimensional works, like ‘Dua’ or ‘Satu Bagian’, “is a way to break the monotony of my process in making two-dimensional works”. Asked why he created sculptures of human limbs, Gusmen replied: “Feet and hands symbolize work. The brain is important, but hands and feet execute all the things that are to be done”.
Zulkarnaini was born in January 1969. The two large ‘conceptual’ canvases he displays are entitled ‘Rain Forest’ and ‘River Forest’. On the canvases are attached thin slices of carpet, for Zulkarnaini feels carpet has attractive textures, and the carpet slices are placed to indicate line and movement. Everything is painted a brilliant white. “Lines have connection with nature”, Zulkarnaini says, “We live in nature, and are inseparable from its forests. Yet, rain forests are being neglected. Their function has shifted. Forest rivers now provide transportation for logs got from the arbitrary felling of trees. Humans have forced forest rivers to betray their own mother nature”. Destruction to the rain forests has led Zulkarnaini to make clean white works “in which their simplicity retains significance”. By eliminating all painted illusionary and expressive brushwork, he challenges the notion of painting. He makes art ‘objects’ opposed to paintings. His work creates afresh the wonder of seeing, which can not be captured by a representational image.
Saftari was born in September 1971. Elements of ‘Dadaism’ are found in Saftari’s intriguing sculptures. The series ‘Menu Hari Ini’ are “bizarre objects” made from combining a stove with a typewriter! “It began with the fact that a stove is for cooking”, Saftari explains, “and a typewriter is for cooking ideas to make writing”. In the series ‘Berita Dinding’ fragments of typewriters, cut in half at odd angles, are stuck to the gallery walls. The typewriters only have keys that make up Saftari’s name. “It begins with an object I am interested in”, Saftari states, “and an idea to make something out of it will follow. Finally, the object and the idea make a perfect match”.
With its eclectic mix of art styles and materials, the four exhibiting artists appear to have little in common. Their work is about ideas which revise, extend and question conventional ways of making and defining art. The exhibition asks how art might be discussed and experienced, and, ultimately, questions the true meaning of art. Maybe, Roland Barthes was right when he announced in 1967 the “death of the author”, suggesting that art can have various meanings and interpretations, some of which may not even have been intended by their creators. As suggested by the art critic Rizki A. Zaelani in the catalogue, “the works on exhibition share something in common regarding their responses to the issue of interpretation”. Zaelani quotes the critic Susan Sontag, and her notion that ‘interpretation’ is a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, or certain ‘rules’ of interpretation. This was her response to the formalist interpretation of art promoted by the critic Clement Greenberg. Sontag challenged the concept of ‘interpretation’ of works of art being based on some ready-made conceptions resulting from ‘cold’ reasoning, and, instead, suggested “the possibility of an ‘open’ model of interpretation that enables surprises and unanticipated significances to spring from responses out of one’s sensibility”. The exhibition ‘4 Leaps’ is indeed full of surprises, and, perhaps, this is one exhibition where it is not necessary to seek an obvious ‘meaning’ in the works. Rather, it is best to allow the works to resonate on the subconscious. As Susan Sontag wrote, “all real art has the capacity to make us nervous”.
