Following 4 sold out solo shows in Indonesia, Element Art Space is pleased to announce Hendra “HeHe” Harsono's (Indonesia, b. 1983) first exhibition in Singapore called Silent Crowd. Silent Crowd series’ presentation of society and social media surely echo his last Invisible exhibition, where he defined cyber space and relationships of people with the virtual world. But instead of commenting on the new social structure, which is a combination of real- world interactions as well as virtual ones, HeHe presents the current status of society and social media as is and invites the viewers to make their own commentary.

HeHe recognizes and is heavily involved in social media. He imagines the virtual world as a vast space with no corners and embraces it together with his generation. HeHe’s works elevate social media and proposes that it counterweight the ongoing devaluation of human lives. Social media is still virtual and has a sense of ‘un-realness’ to it, but it provides endless space and opportunity to speak with another person without actually facing the person as depicted in “Monologue Home” and “Neighborhood.” HeHe does not attempt to prove that social media divorces human contact when, in fact, it is the opposite. People can be voyeurs such as in “The Watchers” through applications such as Instagram to show what the other person is seeing right at that moment. They can also update each other on their location using Foursquare as drawn in “Somewhere Only We Know.”

The fact that, rather than being separate ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds, online and offline realms are integrated is exactly why people can attempt to break away from the constraints in their offline lives by hacking their connectivity through online interaction. And this is what Hehe is showing through his works in Silent Crowd.