ID_ONE is the first of a series of exhibitions that Biasa artspace hosts with the purpose of creating a novel stage of communication and recontextualisation of artistic projects, supported and produced by the gallery in the past few years. Four shows starting the 15th of February until the end 2009. Each exhibition will feature a selection of works galvanized into the investigation of the disorienting effects of contemporary globalization, in search of identity both in Indonesia and abroad.
Nine identities, Nine artists, Nine visions of contemporary life representing an introspective and kaleidoscopic journey where medias and modes of expressions blurr the borders of social communication. Rather than group exhibitions the project arises from the idea of accounting the ways in which the younger generations of artists express changes in contemporary cultural texture (locally and globally), simultaneously contributing to map Biasa Art Space’s intellectual DNA.
Filippo Sciascia: His works are painted by memory. The artist records his dreams on the canvas, producing visions all evoked within nocturnal atmospheres . As to always recall his Italian origins the artist operates a transfiguration of his personal onirical dimension that results eventually reified in the encounter with the picture plan, Ugo Untoro’s works unwittingly epitomise the change from the former to the raising generation of artists in Indonesia. He represents the bridge between old and new schools, by typifying the state of the art on the eastern side of the planet. Untoro epitomises both the wild horse and the horsebreaker, he represents simultaneously the solitude of the artist and the army struggling for battle. His works are the Troy horse entering the realm of human madness.
Purbandono is by all means the upgraded artist. He upgrades his own individual universe at each software being released on the marketplace. The use of technology is with him a necessity rather than a choice. His voracity for contemporary images leads him to an endless need to cross the world transversely. The artist merges the binary codes with the vocabulary proper to the art making. Purbandono, thus, memorises, backups, burns and archives memories of the future, recounting through a process of decontextualisation of invisible and forgotten everyday life objects that he appropriates as his own manifesto of Indonesian Digital Art Observing Kokok’s works in the context of this show, one realises unexpectedly that, besides his own visual intent he somehow presents himself as Purbandono’s nemesis. Using a traditional process for the technical realisation of his still-life paintings, the artist surprisingly chose to the greatness of nature using a highly technological gaze. The series of works “(in) complete”simulates the encounter between human and computer processing. The artist seems to look through a microscope, defying softwares such photoshop in order to demonstrate to the viewer were the difference between man and machine truly stands. His eyes see micro while his hands depict macro, we are abruptly projected on dishes that more than containing fruit, hold the memory of it.
Yuli Prayitno: « I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears... in rain. Time to die.»
The appearance of objects can be, and often are, deceiving. Some people claim to see unimaginable things. Yuli Prayitno is one them, although differing from the others by reifying her visions into palpable and accessible images. The artist shows a quite fantastic form of personal fetishism; her objects of common use awake to life betraying both their former nature and their pre-established function. She transforms reality into a staged scenario with the purpose of relating the other (wild) side of the visible. Arya Pandjalu’s research mainly focuses on alienation. His anthropomorphic imagery, often operated by the substitution of the upper part of the human body, transfigurates human edges and boundaries into a parallel dimension where mental processes, are released from spatial and temporal restrictions .
Teddy Darmawan somehow represents Pandjalu’s antithesis for his quest upon identity principally relies on human intellect. While bodies and backgrounds fade, the head, instead, materialises on the picture plan as the uncontested subject.
Farhan Siki’s approach addresses the artistic practice as a crucial player in the shaping of urban and social identity. Such process can only take place when artists appropriate parts of the public environment to create a new glossary of signs aimed at reconciling the “Machine Civilisation” with the body of human subjective experience.
Wedhar Ryadi’s works mainly by transferring his thoughts and emotions into a playful and rather colourful imaginary dimension. Mimicking a modern Alice in Wonderland, the artist creates his own realm of myth, which features are highly inspired to eastern comics, where human experiences and desires are projected and expanded to be interiorised.
