Setting the tone: JA Pramuhendra’s installation, Black Wall, stands in contrast to the white opulence of the National Gallery.

For his second solo exhibition, artist J. Ariadhitya Pramuhendra  – better known as JA Pramuhendra  –  sketched and sculpted holy figures based on his recollections of childhood memories.

The air is cold and the flames of candles flicker slightly in the breeze. In the distance stand hooded figures at the edge of the room, with their gazes palpable at times. As the light illuminates paintings on the walls, visitors sit in the pews, pondering.

The place is not a medieval monastery, but rather a section of JA Pramuhendra’s solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Indonesia.

Held from March 23 to April 7, The Monster Chapter II: Momentum is part two of Pramuhendra’s The Monster exhibition trilogy. The first chapter, Memory, took place at CAN’S Gallery in Tanah Abang, Jakarta, last year.

Guiding light: Artist JA Pramuhendra explores his installation Let There be Light, Angels, featured in his solo exhibition The Monster Chapter II: Momentum at the National Gallery in Jakarta.

“The monsters here are memories, meanings, the past and questions I have had throughout my life,” Pramuhendra said. “Those things kept me alive to this day.”

It is his Catholic upbringing that Pramuhendra revisited in Momentum, particularly his memories of seeing his father, a physics teacher, drawing holy figures as a hobby.

Many of the featured works of art have a distinctly Catholic overtone to them, evoking images of the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods and even resembling the paintings one would see in a place of worship.

“It comes down to my experiences of spirituality since my childhood, drawing a lot from Catholicism, so I unconsciously created [the art] in that way.”

Pramuhendra brings the atmosphere of an old church to the gallery’s Building A, with pews and candlelit artwork as part of his installation Let There be Light, Angels.

The Sinner installation by JA Pramuhendra.

The installation and some other works in the exhibition showcase Pramuhendra’s clever use of lighting to accentuate the solemness – and at times the boldness – of his Catholicism-inspired works.

“I don’t want to say that this is about religion, but rather about art itself,” said the graphics design graduate of the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB).

“What I want is to invoke another view of the universe with the light and the darkness. It’s not an issue of Catholicism or any religion, but rather a larger metaphor of the universe.”

Pramuhendra is best known for his charcoal sketches that, among other issues, touch on spirituality. In this exhibition, he shows his forte of using charcoal to create monochromatic works of art – one of which is massive in scale

His installation Black Wall is a 5-meter-tall structure that can be seen from the pedestrian bridge outside the National Gallery. Made of a charcoal mixture, the wall, which resembles construction blocks, dominates the gallery’s facade.

A Stone, Blood, and the Forgotten Face by JA Pramuhendra.

“I want visitors to be able to experience the sensations of contemporary art outside of paintings,” the artist said. “This is also why I wanted to have a talk on architecture because I’m also dealing with space as opposed to just hanging a painting and being done with it.”

The exhibition’s curator, Rizki A. Jaelani, noted that Pramuhendra’s use of charcoal and lighting was his way to signify the constant changes in one’s “personal universe”.

The exhibition trilogy is part of Pramuhendra’s way of drawing meaning from his memories of Catholic imagery. Though he is more than halfway through the trilogy, he is still searching for answers to several questions.

“I’ve designed the exhibition to be part of a trilogy, and the question about what is haunting me is not the religious part, but rather memories of Christian imagery in society, memories of my father’s penchant for that imagery.

“These things get unconsciously internalized growing up, and I still question what the real monsters are to me.”

Monochrome: JA Pramuhendra showcases his charcoal sketching skills in The Last Scene.

— Photos by the National Gallery/Indra Wijaya