Preview: 5 gallery highlights from Art Jakarta 2018

Celebrating its 10th year, Art Jakarta returns in August 2018 with a fanfare of Southeast Asian institutions.

Art Radar offers an inside glimpse into five exhibiting galleries and their represented artists.

Wiyoga Muhardanto, ‘Papa’, 2017, plastic figurines, epoxy putty, acrylic paint, painted fiberglass, clothes and shoes, 115 x 35 x 20 cm. Image courtesy Lawangwangi.

Since its inauguration in 2009, Art Jakarta has developed and established itself as one of the most prominent contemporary art fairs in Southeast Asia. As the “first and foremost art fair in Indonesia”, Art Jakarta embraces exhibition from all angles and practices, from artists, galleries, collectors, academics and publishers to art enthusiasts, and serves as a platform in the development of Indonesia’s art market and discovery of emerging talent.

As the 2017 edition brought in over 47,000 visitors, with nearly 80 percent of the exhibited artwork being sold, Art Jakarta’s 2018 edition seeks to up the ante, offering a new series of presentations and publications in its 10th year. This comes alongside the recent cancellation of Jakarta’s other preeminent contemporary art fair – Art Stage Jakarta – which was to be held later in September. Amid political unrest and a series of violent attacks that have spilled into neighbouring cities, the fair, which last year boasted more than 60 international gallery participants, leaves Art Jakarta and ArtJog (which ran until 4 June 2018) as this summer’s sole art fairs in the nation’s capital.

Despite ongoing strife, organisers of Art Jakarta are confident that the 2018 implementation will be as strong as ever, propelling Indonesia into a future of economic and cultural prosperity. Art Radar takes a look at a few of the exhibiting galleries that play key roles in this year’s mission.

Ipan Lasuang, ‘Sekejap sirna … membagikan Kenangan dan Harapan’, acrylic on linen, 150 x 200 cm. Image courtesy Art Jakarta and Element Artspace.

1. Mizuma Gallery (Japan/Singapore/Indonesia)

Established in Tokyo by Sueo Mizuma, Mizuma Gallery has, since its 1994 opening, expanded to the Gillman Barracks, Singapore in 2012 and to Yogyakarta’s residency space in 2014. While the gallery is typically home for the region’s Japanese artists, recent years have focused on the promotion of young talents from Southeast Asia. Mizuma is scheduled to attend Art Jakarta with Angki Purbandono and the Indonesian husband and wife collective, Indieguerillas.

Purbandono is one of Indonesia’s most prominent artists from culturally-rich Yogyakarta. He is most widely-noted for his ‘scanography’ experiments through which photographic images are born from a flat-bed image scanner. In opposition to a photograph, Purbandono’s method reduces the image’s depth of field, creating a scene that is invasive and hyper-detailed. The light that is emitted from his scanner, being so close to the objects themselves, casts an eerie flood-light effect that is in stark contrast with his background and the rest of the gallery’s booth.

Angki Purbandono, ‘Superior’, 2015 – 2017, scanography, lightbox installation, 200 x 76 cm. Image courtesy Mizuma Gallery. © Angki Purbandono.

Indieguerillas is an artist duo made up of Dyatmiko Lancur Bawono and Santi Ariestyowanti. The married team, currently based in Yogyakarta, was established in 1999 as a graphic design firm, not transitioning into fine art until 2007. Their philosophy, “constantly in guerrilla to find new possibilities”, has inspired their use of unconventional media and techniques as part of their practice, within which design effects and inter-media experimentation are paired with folklore imageries. The unique intermingling of traditional values, guerrilla ideology and contemporary culture has brought Indieguerillas to the forefront of Indonesian contemporary art display, their work having been exhibited in an array of international galleries and biennials.

Indieguerillas, ‘Berburu Celeng (after Djoko Pekik)’, 2016, customised Nike shoes, embroidery, fur, resin, brass, digital print on acrylic, charcoal, electronic device, and carpet, dimensions variable. Image courtesy Mizuma Gallery. © indieguerillas.

2. Art Xchange Gallery (Indonesia/Singapore)

Founded in 2009 in Surabaya, East Java, Art Xchange Gallery was created as a space to showcase the diversity of modern and contemporary artists from different parts of the island. After two years of successfully garnering attention for both emerging artists and bigger names in Indonesia, Art Xchange established its second gallery in Singapore in March 2011. They attend Art Jakarta 2018 with artists Antoe Budiono and Camelia Mitasari Hasibuan in tow.

Budiono is a self-instructed hyperrealist artist whose paintings portray a playful dance between mundanity and humour. Further, his works often touch on ancient Javanese proverbs – pepatah – which illustrate formulaic folk metaphors and are, the artist argues, still applicable today.

Antoe Budiono, ‘PHP (Empty Promises)’, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 160 x 115 cm. Image courtesy Art Xchange.

Mitasari Hasibuan, the youngest artist at Art Xchange, is a surrealist painter and the daughter of renowned Indonesian artist Husin Hasibuan. In following her father’s footsteps, the artist utilises paintbrushes that only contain a few bristles, creating highly-detailed, yet symphonic scenes. Her work on display at Art Jakarta addresses both personal feelings and her strong emotions on deforestation and global climate change, many of her paintings reenacting the imagined aftermaths of pollution and mass animal extinction. With this comes a harsh, two-dimensional criticism of mankind’s egocentrism and the harsh, and largely ignored, effect that continues to destroy the planet.

Camelia Mitasari Hasibuan, ‘Reflections of Life’, 2018, oil on canvas, 200 x 140 cm. Image courtesy Art Xchange.

3. Puri Art Gallery (Indonesia)

Puri Art Gallery was the first established gallery in Malang, East Java in 2001. Since its inception, the space has been devotedly supporting the art atmosphere in the East Java district, opening their doors to emerging artists and experimentation.

Ni Gusti Agung Galuh, ‘Kampung (Balinese Village)’, 2017, oil on canvas, 80 x 200 cm. Image courtesy Puri Art Gallery.

Ni Gusti Agung Galuh is a representative of Puri at this year’s fair and is poised to present a series of post-traditional Balinese paintings. An admirer of Walter Spies, her work embodies a soft ambiance and sensationalism that permeates through her memory of Balinese sceneries. Between epic landscape painting and figurative map of countryside memory, Galuh’s work offers a soft respite from Puri Gallery’s neighbouring psychedelic pop pieces by American artist Richard Irwin Meyer.

Richard Irwin Meyer, ‘The Heart of Storm’, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 100 cm. Image courtesy Puri Art Gallery.

4. Yeo Workshop (Singapore)

In contrast to the more formal gallery programmes listed above, Yeo Workshop is a multifunctional contemporary art gallery that orchestrates a series of exhibitions, symposia and research initiatives. Its aim is to stimulate the work of local and international artists whilst engaging with the Singaporean and visiting audiences through education. Keeping true to their mission, Yeo Workshop joins the fair with artists Cole Sternberg and Maryanto.

Sternberg, currently working out of Los Angeles, experiments with poetic paintings, installations, video and texts that touch on a range of social issues. His subtle and subversive works elegantly address humanity and its impact on social progression and development while demonstrating an interest in current events. For Sternberg, an artwork is a tool through which human rights activism and its relationship to the law, the plight of the environment and political crises can be addressed.

Cole Sternberg, ‘algae exploration’, 2017, mixed media on linen, 122 x 173 cm. Image courtesy the artist and YEO Workshop.

Born in Indonesia, Maryanto creates haunting, black and white paintings, drawings and installations that undermine the romantic language of traditional landscape painting. Through theatrical settings and allusions to fables, his sceneries are subjected to the “whims of colonisers and capitalists”, looking at the ways in which technological progress, industrialisation, pollution and exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources dictate physical spaces.

Maryanto, ‘Terragouging’, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 200 cm. Image courtesy the artist and YEO Workshop.

5. Lawangwangi Creative Space (Indonesia)

Lawangwangi Creative Space is one of the biggest and most well-known contemporary art hubs in Bandung. As both a commercial gallery and meeting place, Lawangwangi proudly exhibits hundreds of renowned Indonesian and international artists, including Wiyoga Muhardanto, who will be representing them at Art Jakarta. Of his practice, the artist writes:

I like to replicate an object or space to the scale of 1:1. When I do this, I combine the replica with an object that has contrasting meaning. Through combining two contrasting meanings, I create a new meaning of the object. I am also interested in playing with the context of space and like to focus on the commoditisation of space. As an example, turning a sacred space into a commercialised one.

Wiyoga Muhardanto, ‘High Maintenance’, 2017, plastic figurines, epoxy putty, acrylic paint and pigmented resin, 145 x 18 x 16 cm. Image courtesy Lawangwangi.

As such, Wiyoga’s diverse oeuvre and his participation in this year’s fair is a critical comment on consumerism and the fetishisation of products. Nestled within a commercial art fair – and one of the world’s most elite, no less – Wiyoga’s work is a poignant reflection on the issues of urban society and the drastic divide between social strata. For the artist, this phenomenon carries an immense psychological weight, with which he copes through parody, irony and provocative re-comodification.

Megan Miller

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Art Jakarta 2018 will run from 2 to 5 August 2018 at the Ritz-Carlton Jakarta, Pacific Place, Sudirman Central Business District, JI. Jendral Sudirman Kav. 52-53 Jakarta, 12190, Indonesia.