Mizuma Gallery is delighted to announce ‘Enshrined’, the solo show of Albert Yonathan Setyawan. 

Albert Yonathan Setyawan was born in the West Indonesian city of Bandung in 1983. From the earliest beginnings of his career, his installations incorporating ceramic materials have received wide acclaim both in Indonesia and abroad. Last year he was selected as the youngest artist to exhibit at the Indonesian Pavilion of the 55th Venice Biennale. Since 2012 he has been a doctoral research student in the Ceramics Department of Kyoto Seika University. This is his first solo show in Tokyo.

Symbolic emblems of hummingbirds, moths and angels; or sometimes plants or architectural structures. Ceramic objets of the same shape are arranged in repeated iterations, which become geometrical forms when viewed as a whole. Yonathan’s artwork may not be seen as offering one sole assertion or design. Rather, like the world encircling us, what it depicts precisely depends on the significance with which it encaptures each individual viewer.

Within the world of nature of which our human society is an inextricable part, over and again are re-iterating instances, encounters, crystallizations and chance combinations. Recalling the Buddhist mandalas which depict the cosmos, Yonathan’s works possess a universal quality of the perpetually changing state of natural life. 

The exhibition’s title, ‘Enshrined’, both denotes the condition of being made sacred and implies a respect for nature’s ever-spinning wheel of mystery. Mankind is fundamentally a part of nature: from this there can be no turning away. Living in a society confronted by so many various problems, perhaps there is something we may learn from Yonathan’s work: we of today’s modern world.

The exhibition will consist of six ceramic-produced pieces as well as drawings. We warmly invite you to view the first solo show of Albert Yonathan, its artworks created under the inspiration of his Japanese life.

*image (left)
© Albert Yonathan Setyawan
courtesy of Mizuma Art Gallery