Michael Janssen Singapore presents Indonesian artist Eddy Susanto’s first solo exhibition in Singapore. Entitled Albrecht Dürer and the Old Testament of Java, the paintings on view are an appropriation of Dürer’s famous biblical woodcarvings. Michael Janssen exhibited new works by Susanto earlier this year at the Art Stage Singapore’s Platforms sector.

The series of paintings on view express the juxtaposition that both cultures, European and Indonesian, were experiencing due to the growing influence of new religions, Christianity and Islam respectively, at the turn of the 16th century. To achieve this, Susanto painstakingly replaced the lines of the images with Jawi script, translated from the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament – from which the original carvings were inspired. Rifky Effendy, the exhibition’s curator explains that this “can be construed as an attempt to re-understand the issues surrounding the democratization of the Holy Bible, or even the issues that have disturbed the foundation of a sacred religious office.”

Image: © Eddy Susanto 
Courtesy of the artist and Michael Janssen Singapore