Barisan Ufuk by Yani Mariani Sastranegara. Courtesy of Yani Mariani Sastranegara

All were keen to see what Entang Wiharso, the artist whose aluminum images have been likened to Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia, was to show in his performance, titled Lost and Found.

In Lost and Found, Entang gathered six prominent figures from the art world: Oei Hong Djien, the popular collector and first to build a museum for his Indonesia-focused art collection, Melani Setiawan, also well known and loved as the forever helping hand to artists and whoever needs it; Indra Leonardi, the portrait photographer of presidents and queens; Inge Santoso, owner of the Canna Gallery and project manager for the Indonesian Art Paris project; Wiyu Wahono, the art connoisseur who knows like nobody else the nitty gritty of art collecting based on well-known studies and experience of internationally acknowledged art theories and collecting, and Rina Ciputra, the proud owner and daughter of the host.

All these respected individuals were told to dress up, the gentlemen in black and white, the ladies in festive outfits, and savor succulent food over dinner. But they were also asked not to speak or laugh. Indeed they looked as if they were having their last supper.

Entang waited over them, dressed as the house guard, who then held his own theatrical performance behind the dinner guests, spreading his arms out with hot melting candle dripping onto his open hands — without the diners having any notion of what he was doing. After what seemed like a very long time — over 30 minutes, just when people thought the show was over, a bulldozer droned in and went straight for the table with its fine tableware, crushing everything to pieces. The end result was the beauty and the art Entang was seeking.

My performance is essentially about beauty, he says. As an artist who seeks to create something beautiful in his vision, he goes on, the usual process is to make something out of nothing, but now the process is reversed. When starting a painting for instance, there is nothing preceding the process.

Now objects — which he calls artifacts — were already there, and each of them has a story, he says.

The table for instance was copied from a wooden one. There was fine tableware too. To create a new kind of beauty, a bulldozer appeared when everyone thought the show was over, smashing the table, chairs and fine tableware to pieces, and the whole lot lay as a new piece of beauty, in the eyes of the artist.

But many in the audience perceived it as a representation of the well-to-do who dine and don’t know — as well as don’t care — what is happening outside their own safe haven. Just like in real life, this evoked the ire of the poor masses.

Perhaps the majority did not have the least notion of what the performance actually entailed. Of course, as usual, this did not seem to bother the artist.

Meanwhile, works of 80 Indonesian artists filled the huge Ciputra marketing space. Surely the works were not easy to display around the Image and Space theme, given the space essentially caters for marketing purposes, not exhibitions of this kind.

Regretfully, no effort appeared to have been made to “transform” the space.

But some works were noteworthy in spite of this. Particularly Galam Zulkifli’s Dark Side of the Earth, seven panels drawing the attention of those who have been thinking about overwhelming imaging in our present society. America is epitomized by its popular icons such as President Obama, China by its own symbols, usually from the film industry, but also by the revered Mao Tze Dong.

Both America and China are strong economic powers trying to spread their well-packaged hegemony over the world. In between these two world powers is a black hole, which the artist says represents, us in Indonesia, uncritically taking in everything.

He wonders where we will end up. To visualize this, he incorporates black images within the colored ones, which can only be seen with special lighting.

But the sculptures in the wide yard make sure that, while we need to remain on our toes, our local spirit is still strong.

Yani Mariani Sastranegara’s huge primeval-like stones are lining one side of the open spaces around the building. They are there as if looking for their fellow stones, says the artist. And by fellow stones, she means the building constructions that kill the earth’s arteries.

These are the works and issues standing out in the exhibition of Indonesia’s prime artists, including Astari, Hanafi, Teguh Ostenrik, Wiyoga Muhardianto. S. Teddy D, Ronald Manullang, Dipo Andi, and many more.

The exhibition accompanies Ciputra’s grand vision for art entrepreneurship, which he calls artpreneurship, also accompanied with several talks and workshops.

Artpreneurship

Space and Image
Visual art exhibition and workshops
April 24-May 22, 2010
At Ciputra World Marketing Gallery
Jl. Prof. Dr. Satrio, kav 11
Jakarta

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