Murals turns bland concrete into art

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 12/23/2005 4:54 PM  |  Life

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A white-and-red cardboard box with the letters ""WA"" printed on the top arrived in Jakarta from France some weeks ago carrying the materials and instructions for the putting on of an extraordinary mural exhibition here in the capital.

Freeing paintings and drawings from canvas and paper, the exhibition, arranged by the French Cultural Center (CCF) and RuangRupa, uses walls in public spaces and commercial centers for the exhibition of nine mural drawings, four by French artists and five by Indonesian artists.

Assisted by a full-color catalog complete with instructions, the four French artists, Virginie Barr, Ivan Fayard, Mathieu Mercer and Olivier Millagou, delegated the mural work to five Indonesian artists, who faithfully complied with their instructions.

Ivan Fayard was the only one of the artists who visited Jakarta to see and supervise the work of two artisans working on his Spermators mural at Parc.

""I would like to paint it myself, but I respect the contract with the organizer,"" he said, explaining why he merely supervised the work, instead of painting it himself.

""But I really like the result,"" he added at the opening of the exhibition on Dec. 20 at Aksara bookstore in Kemang.

The local artists, Brama Oktiawan, Aditya Surya Taruna, Ary Buy Shandra, Mg Pringgotono, and Chairul Insan, projected slides of the paintings on the wall, carefully following the lines, and consulting with the original artists should any difficulties arise.

The results are four paintings, slightly different from the originals, one at the Aksara Bookstore in Kemang, one at Kota Train Station, one at the CCF in Salemba and one at Parc in Kebayoran Baru.

Besides executing other artists' paintings, the five are also exhibiting their own works, all painted on dull concrete walls under the flyover at the busy intersection of Jl. Gatot Subroto and Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said in South Jakarta.

Motorists and pedestrians should not worry about being forced to watch grim or complicated works of art. Instead, all five murals have relaxing and funny messages.

While their French compatriots exhibit interesting, if somewhat cryptic works, the young artists, collectively working under the lead of curator Dimas Jayasrana from RuangRupa, have created murals with obvious messages.

One mural, for example, parodies the ubiquitous Starbucks logo, with the text reading ""Tiada yang senikmat kopi buatan istri (No coffee is as nice as the one made by your wife)"". A bit too sexist for hardcore feminists, perhaps, but light and entertaining anyway.

Two other murals show colorful graphic characters with texts like the ones we usually see on the rear ends of trucks: Bebas tapi Sopan (Free yet polite).

Another one parodies a drawing of two hills with a half-risen sun, a group of birds flying, paddy fields and a house -- the sort of banal creation that every child from the New Order generation was forced to draw at school, a practice that probably still survives in rural schools up to now.

WA in Jakarta is a part of the WA experiment started in France in 1995 when French artists got the bright idea of transferring, rather than transporting, exhibition materials.

So instead of transporting the painting on canvas, complete with insurance documents, from place to place, WA transfers the idea through the WA catalog, which contains the contemporary mural works of 16 French artists.

""The works form an exhibition that moves in space and in time, adapting itself to the settings, and provides support for organizing events, meetings, workshops and talks,"" the introduction to the WA catalog says.

Thus, Fayard's work Spermators is now being exhibited simultaneously in Jakarta and Switzerland.

The exhibition began on Dec. 20 and will, no doubt, end eventually, but no one from the organizing committee could say exactly when.

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