Ade Darmawan questions 'supermarket culture'

Farah Wardani, Contributor, Jakarta

Mankind has advanced a long way from the days when a simple dinner meal at home meant long hours of hunting, fishing and chopping. The process of modernization has made subsistence an obsolete concept as every single item a person needs ready-made. Everything is provided for people to take and use, as long as there's money, of course.

Consumption is like the destiny of modern urban people today, defining the market as not only a place or system of trade, it is a universal culture on a greater scale. Thus, to what extent are we aware of this pre-conditioned state that gives great influence in constructing our way of living, thinking and doing - even our selfhood? Is there life beyond this web of consumption?

Such questions are what Ade Darmawan poses during his solo exhibit at Centre Culturel Francais (CCF) Jakarta, entitled Supply and Demand.

Trained through international art internships, projects and workshops, Darmawan, 29, is one of the artists in his generation who has been consistent in showing commitment to contemporary art development (as in the conceptual or interpretive areas in particular) in his relatively young career.

Supply and Demand is Darmawan's first solo exhibition in his hometown, a kind of a pilot project before a long-term project based on the same theme, which serves as an output of his creative process that mainly concentrates on modernity issues and the urban culture debate. In this exhibition, to convey his ideas, he depicts one of the most common, vivid and integral symbols of the modern mass culture: the supermarket.

Darmawan tries to stimulate his audience to excavate the elements of "living the supermarket life" through objects that are mostly presented in the way supermarket goods are, with plenty of styrofoam and plastic packaging in glass cabinets with neon lights.

It can be seen from a stack of shelves displaying images of a supermarket on a video screen, a pack of raw whole chicken left to rot, and a scattering of old nostalgic objects, all wrapped up in the styrofoam-plastic packaging with barcode stickers marked with years in the place of the price.

On another corner, there are products put on the floor, presenting everyday household goods such as soap, detergent, washing liquid and that sort, accompanied by receipts. Each one is an outcome of a task that Darmawan handed to two people (a man and a woman), providing them with a fixed budget to perform their ordinary grocery shopping in a supermarket and then handing in the purchased items to him. Attached on the wall are digital prints of enlarged texts of persuasive jargons and slogans found on the product packages.

Near the entrance there is a glass box containing four liters of liquid floor cleaner with its chemical pine scent that fills the whole room, giving the sterile, clinical atmosphere as can be sensed usually in the supermarket. It is accompanied with a series of digital prints showing pictures of supermarket objects and also the working staff. In the center, five shopping carts placed facing a wide-sized mirror on the opposite wall. Two carts contain heaps of oranges, one is empty and two others contain several common household goods. The goods were chosen according to what Darmawan had researched on household product substances with potential to produce explosive effects.

Each series of installations in this exhibition presents Darmawan's thoughts of how supermarket items can be used to explore our aspects of being a modern urbanite. The supermarket, in a way, resembles a gallery with objects and images to fulfill our needs and desires.

It represents a metaphor of the modern life: the timeless, painless, instant and sterile civilization that has been increasingly detaching us from our own senses - packed with images, texts and other items for us to take and use to build our identity, mentality, memory -- even reality. At the same time, beneath the sterility there is a hazard of potential chaos which can explode any time.

With such great issues to ponder, what seems to be lacking in output is that there is too much subtlety in the assemblages that makes it a bit doubtful for the whole installation to communicate strongly enough, nor does he provide sufficient information and references for the viewers to respond to his ideas. The objects are also too dominated with inorganic items which emanates a bit too much dryness in the whole atmosphere, whereas actually he could have used more organic items to add a more visceral sense that might help to balance the whole concurrence as well as sharpening his concept.

Nonetheless, Darmawan manages to avoid the most common thing that happens when artists try to elaborate on such an issue, that is to fall into the stereotypical socialist or anti-capitalism propaganda which at times ends up being merely rhetorical in many cases. He does not present a simulation or a spectacle which resists the existence of capitalism (as represented by the supermarket), the sort of cheap tricks also commonly used in socially-engaged art.

In this exhibition, what Ade Darmawan does is "supply" space for interpretations, points of departure for the audience to read the configuration of the objects, to rethink the way the modern urban culture is constructed by it, and how it affects our sense and mentality as human beings. Above all, as referred to in the rhetorical question he used as the subtitle of the project (which somehow works like an advertising slogan), "Is there life after supermarket?" It's up to us to decide.

Supply and Demand, an art exhibition by Ade Darmawan will last until Oct. 15, 2003 at Centre Culturel Francais (CCF) Jakarta, Jl. Salemba Raya 25, Central Jakarta, Tel. 3907716.