Proklamasi! Five Artists from Indonesia: Agus Bacul, Farhan Siki, Kokok P. Sancoko, Tofan Ari Widianto, Ugo Untoro

Aesthetic as the New ‘Politic’

Along the history of Indonesian art movement in Indonesia, the city of Yogyakarta had shown a very crucial role, particularly regarding the birth of very important artists that marked the shifting of art practices in Indonesia. Since the last years of 1800s and early of 1900s, the period often called as the earliest period of modern Indonesian art, especially noted by the reputation of Raden Saleh, Yogyakarta became the space where new art ideas had been developed, growth fruitfully, and later on, to raise debate and discourses among the artists. Yogyakarta also the city where all the pioneers of Indonesian contemporary arts studied, and their interaction led to one of the most radical movement in 1970s, called Seni Kepribadian Apa (literary translation: Art as Meaningless Identity), that had also been one of the most important references to The New Art Movement declared in Bandung in mid of 1970s.** Around a decade later, in Yogyakarta, artist couple Mella Jaarsma (The Netherlands) and Nindityo Adipurnomo (Indonesia) established Cemeti Modern Art Gallery (now called as Cemeti Art House) that has shown a significant contribution to the aesthetic development of young artists in Indonesia.

In this exhibition, there are five young talented and important artists from Yogyakarta, whose works represent the current development of Indonesian contemporary arts. These five artists are proposing the various styles and mediums and showing interesting approaches and tendency related to the social life of Indonesian society post 1998 (the last political revolution). In this case, it would be also very interesting to see how the younger generation of artists is absorbing the traffic of ideas in the artistic field of global contemporary visual arts. The role of Yogyakarta also becomes interesting in term of the map of art system, since this city shows the juxtaposition between global and local art practices, the contemporary and the traditional, the trend and the contemplative one, where this diversity has contributed a fundamental character of the works of artists in Yogyakarta.

Young Artists and New Political Awareness
The artists who are now in this exhibition are part of the new generation of young artists in Indonesia who grew up as artist after the period of political art movement in mid of 1990s, which successfully encouraged the fell down of long term authoritarian regime in 1998. In the early 1990s, almost all of the artists were actively part of the political movement to spread out the discourse of democracy and anti-autoritarianism, which was against the government. Artists built strong network with intellectual group and common people, some of them were working in grass roots together with the labor, farmer and poor urban people, and were articulating those experiences in their works—verbally or metaphorically. By creating these kinds of works, they also created a space for dialogue because the canal of expression was closed by government sensor policy. Because of this situation, issues such as democratization, anti-militarism, anti-violence, anti-feudalism, and some other common issues became the main discourses for the development of Indonesian contemporary arts during that period.

Most of the artists in this exhibition were not part of the phenomenon where “politic is the commander”, or maybe some of them were in the transition era. When the political repression reached its most monumental event, they were still very young, did not directly become the victim of this regime and its policy, and somehow, got the distance from such anger or being outsider of the subversive actions. When the regime finally was down, it was the freedom of expression in public space that became first requirement in order to reorganize the society, including art practice and activity. Young generation of artists, because of the distance, were granted with this freedom in creating and articulating their mind and ideas without feeling afraid of being censored or put in jail, something that was part of the risks taken by the previous generations.

The shifting of political climate had lead to a radical change in term of art practice for the following generation. The freedom of expression, particularly in term of journalism, encouraged all the mass media to be the mainstream canal to anchor actual social political events, the space that used to be dominated by the artists and intellectual group. The artists, from old and new generations, by this situation, were challenged to find their new artistic language, or to explore more relevant issues.

At the same time, this new generation of artists is part of the new dynamic of global contemporary art movement that consider Asia as the new power from those groups which somehow referred as “the other”. However, most of the issues encountered by old generation, which were very local and represented the idea of Indonesian-ness, then, slowly, are replaced by universal issues that relate to the local art practices with the concept of ‘global village’ as been defined by Marshal McLuhan. The rapid growth of the pop culture spreads out by the new telecommunication technologies, particularly internet, had influenced the young people’s habit. Young artists tend to use the virtual reality as part of their daily reality, searching on the world networking for new issues and languages, absorbing the new cultures as fast as other young people all around the world. Problem of identity, mostly is interpreted as a new question towards the sense of ‘self’ and a seeking of the unique quality of ‘us’ when it comes to the concept of globalization.

Contemporary art practices are also being marked by the adaptation of new visual strategies that encourage them to create achievements in term of techniques and mediums. Young artists in Indonesia become part of the global visual art trends, moving along very fast, and, on the other side, keep the never ending question regarding their art practices and their role in social context. While the previous generation of artists tended to underline their actual role in social and political process, the recent artists tends to avoid those attributes that state the role of artists in a romantic perspective. Indeed, they prefer to see the profession as artist like any other profession that has no privilege in society. This statement also refers to the new way to perceive politic in their everyday life. If the concept of politic before 1998 merely about the power relation between state and common people, by the time when the democratization process grows, what so called as politic also been interpreted in more fluid way, in a wider concept of “power”, which especially become power without capital letter, and include also a horizontal power relation between citizens.

Artistic Approaches and Aesthetic Vision of the New Generation

Five artists in this exhibition are interesting example of new generation of artists in the new Indonesia. Each of them has their own way to present how the personal experience had given a strong foundation for them to search new world view, which is unique and special, and to interpret the complexity of the world. They capture the complexity not in the frame of great narrations, indeed they prefer to play with smaller scale of subjects, coming from the daily life, and to reinvent the new perception of reality.

Let us see the painting of Kokok Sancoko, for example. He works on a very common and usual subject, known as small things compare to political issues: vegetable and fruits. By working intensively with these two subjects during the last three or four years, he tries to find more, and further more, to redefine new formalism. The subject vegetable and fruits, which have been known for as elements for decorative art, transformed into subject with quality of contemporary visual language in the hand of Kokok Sancoko. The form of vegetable and fruits were applied on canvases with certain techniques that, at the first glance, seems as abstract approach, so that the initial form hardly to be recognized. The lightness of the brushstroke, even sometimes almost present transparent color, had brought the impression of ‘light and contemporary’ for his paintings. The reality of the subject—vegetable and fruits—has disappeared, and the audience faces the artist’s interpretation to the new reality, bring our fantasy and imagination to a new way of seeing the subject.

If Kokok does not directly been called as abstract painter, and he does not tend to be so, the other artist, Agus Bakoel, is recognized as one of rising star in the field of this style in art scene in Indonesia in last five years. Post 1998, and actually had been started since few years before, abstract style that been dominated the discourse of Indonesian modern art scene then almost been left by younger artists. The very strong relation between the young people and popular culture encouraged them to dig and explore more the artistic language that has been spread out massively in public space, such as using comic style, to borrow the tradition established by the pop-art, especially in America. The other examples are the blossoming of new European painting style, or the new formalism that tends to redefine or to replay with the meaning of an object. Strikingly different with most of those tendencies, Agus Bakoel since the very beginning developed his interest into abstract style. He started with his project to recollect the meaning of letters, mostly Arabic letter, and, in a way, interpreting the traditional form like calligraphy into contemporary visual form. Recently, like works he created for this exhibition, he works on series about natural still life, titled Secret Garden project, where he explores the visual possibility of flowers, leaves or trees, as the main subjects.

Ugo Untoro is an artist with a very unique position in the contemporary art map in Indonesia. In one side, his works offer a communicative visual imagery that easily connecting his idea with the audience, but, in the other side, he put also a philosophical visual symbol that challenges audience to perceive his works conceptually. Ugo likes to underline satire humor in his paintings that reflects his deep thought about humanity and civilization, both in personal or social context. Most of Ugo’s paintings stretch out the view of loneliness, or to put it more correct, of solitude. He departs from local wisdom that he brought from his personal experiences, for example about the power relation that is visualized in shadow puppets performance in Javanese society (since he is Javanese himself), or his deep love to horses and the meaning of horses in his society. In term of visuality, Ugo plays mostly with color, composition and the very simple yet effective visual symbol. From his exploration on the puppets series, he started to be work more on shadows. His works for this exhibition, for example, the River series, has been developed to go through beyond shadows as physicality, and to put it in more conceptual meaning, to symbolize what is been visible and invisible, be or not to be, the real and the blurry, existing and hidden.

Farhansiki chooses an interesting yet diverse visual tradition comes from his background as street artist. Joining the most important mural project in Yogyakarta, Sama-sama, Farhan mostly known as mural artist/graffiti artist and also active in the movement of underground comic in the city. In his later development, when he tried to use canvas as his new medium, Farhan applied the usual techniques he uses when he did painting on the wall and any other public places, combining all the style and techniques in random pattern. He uses paint brush, acrylic, marker, and sometimes put photocopy paper as part of the collage. His subjects are ranging from the iconic symbols, rumbling letters almost become meaningless since all of them are unreadable. The iconic forms that could be recognized in his painting mainly is self-portrait, with additional objects like flowers, gun, human brain, animals, and many other thing that actually can be found easily on the streets in our daily life. His text merges from the representation of his uncontrolled mind that formed kind of journal for his observation on personal experiences.

The youngest artist in this exhibition is Tofan Ari Widianto. He digs his inspiration from the superhero figures he found out from pop cultures, combined with his interpretation to visual references in contemporary art history, for example to make appropriation of the works of Mondrian that he shows for this exhibition. With his background in Craft while he studied at the art school, his three dimensional works shows his high skill working in detail, and to interpret those simple ideas. Like many other artist working with object or sculpture, Tofan tries to play to the issues of function and aesthetic, between abstract three dimensional objects and narrative/figurative model.

Epilogue
As explained before, the approaches are used by these artists in this exhibition reflects the new strategy for the young artists to put their existence in the New Indonesia, as well as in regional (Asia) context. Playing with personal issues, redefining meaning and medium, representing the new reality are part of their statement. Living in the country without governmental initiative or cultural policy, this generation of artists finds their own way to access the knowledge and to be part of global art scene. Their exploration is self-fulfilled and not supported by strong infrastructure that proves their spirit to reach new achievements that never been reached by previous generation of artists. We are now witnessing a new future in Indonesian contemporary art.

**The New Art Movement was initiated by some students in Indonesian Institute of the Arts (where most of them were the founders of Art of Meaningless Identity) including those legendaries figure such as Jim Supangkat, FX Harsono, Ronald Manulang, Dede Eri Supria, and many other senior artists now. Their initial movement was done in Indonesian Institute of th Art and Art and Design Faculty Bandung Institute of Technology. Their main goal at that time was to fight for the freedom of expression in term of artistic creating. Years after their movement, it can be seen that they had put a platform for new achievements in Indonesian contemporary art. They used the found objects as part of three dimensional objects and sculpture, making graphic work in editions, that considered as very radical action at the moment.