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Jakarta Post

Art plus: THE TRANSFORMATION A.D. PIROUS - OF MEDIA AND MESSAGES

Photos courtesy of ISA ART ADVISORYA

Words Sebastian Partogi (The Jakarta Post)
Sun, March 20, 2016 Published on Mar. 20, 2016 Published on 2016-03-20T11:09:38+07:00

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Photos courtesy of ISA ART ADVISORY

A.D. Pirous, the 84-year-old artist specializing in calligraphy, told reporters about one particular person who would not let go of one of his paintings during an auction of his work in the 1980s.

'€œI finally approached him and asked what was going on. He said that he was a silk-screen [sablon] artist who really cherished the painting, but didn'€™t have enough money to buy it,'€ Pirous said.

Thrilled to find a person who understood his aesthetics, Pirous sold him the painting for a nominal sum.

Jump to 1997 and an exhibition at the CIMB Niaga Tower in Jakarta, when Pirous says that he sold another painting, this time for US$30,000, although he adds that the sale did not bring him much joy.

'€œI needed the money. I was disappointed when I realized that he [the buyer] put the painting in storage, maybe in order to sell it to another person,'€ he says. '€œHe didn'€™t buy it out of genuine appreciation.'€

Pirous said that he seldom sold his works, especially after the advent of the Reform era, when he started to incorporate messages about social and political problems, such as corruption or the abuse of power, to reach a wider audience.

According to art dealer Vivi Yip, Pirous is a key figure among Indonesia's artistic calligraphers, who share a market niche with their abstract peers.

'€œAny collector who is versed in the local art world must have owned a piece by pak Pirous. You need to be careful, however, to distinguish between calligraphy artists and craftsmen,'€ she says. '€œThe craftsmen mass-produce their works for religious purposes, thereby exclusively focusing on Koranic scriptures, whereas the artists'€“including pak Pirous'€“don'€™t always use scripture.'€

Since the 1980s, Pirous has created works using the Latin alphabet and in the Indonesian language, instead of exclusively creating works in Arabic.

In the 1970s, he used Koranic scriptures, due to their sacredness, without thinking too much about social relevance, he says.

'€œYou can'€™t stop growing as an artist. In the 1980s, I became dissatisfied with the thought that my works contained only a religious breadth, without any relevance to the development of our civilization. That was when I started to stretch as an artist.'€

Now, Pirous says he views his paintings as scribbles containing commentaries and thoughts about social, political and economic issues.

The transformation of the painter'€™s works over almost 50 years is evident at a 13-work retrospective curated by Deborah Iskandar of ISA Art Advisory titled '€œA.D. Pirous: Spiritual Calligraphy'€, which runs until April 1 in the lobby of the World Trade Center 2.

Born on March 11, 1932 in Meulaboh, Aceh, Abdul Djalil Pirous is known as a pioneer of Indonesian abstract and modern Islamic art.

Graduating from the Bandung Institute of Technology'€™s (ITB) fine arts department, Pirous was a lecturer in painting, typography and calligraphy at the prestigious university until he retired in 2003.



He interrupted his teaching duties in 1969 to study print making and graphic design at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, where he fell in love with calligraphy after seeing a painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that reminded him of Aceh's spiritual culture.

'€œWhen you'€™re away from your hometown, you develop a detached view from your culture of origin. This detachment, paradoxically, heightens your sensitivity to it,'€ Pirous said.

The exhibition showcases the artist'€™s creative evolution, such as in Tulisan Biru (Blue Letters, 1974), a blue canvas with a small space for a string of Arabic letters embossed in greyish white, or the inscription in Etika Gonjang Ganjing Antara Penguasa dan Pengusaha (Deceitful Ethics in Bureaucracy, 2008), which features the text of the Indonesian proverb '€œAda Oebi Ada Talas, Ada Boedi Ada Balas'€, which encourages positive reciprocity in our relationships.

One reporter asked Pirous how he learned to create in so many different alphabets. '€œI really loved handwriting, ever since I was a kid. I learned the Japanese language when I was 10 to 12, during that country'€™s occupation of Indonesia. I also learned Chinese characters.'€

Pirous said that he saw his creative process as a dialogue between himself and his paintings, which reflected the social issues that disturbed his mind at any given time.

'€œI almost never finish a painting in one go,'€ he says. '€œI usually create a number of unfinished paintings that I keep in my studio. I will enter the studio again some other time to discover which painting '€˜speaks'€™ to me at a given time. I will continue working on that particular painting.'€
________________________________

'€œA.D. Pirous: Spiritual Calligraphy'€

Until April 1
World Trade Center 2
SCBD, Jakarta.

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