Anusapati's creativity speaks through nature

Anusapati's creativity speaks through nature

Stuart Koop, Contributor, Yogyakarta

Last Sunday afternoon was interrupted by the snarling sound of
machinery. I assumed it was the garage next door, where they
regularly beat car panels. "But surely not on a Sunday?" I
thought.

When I listened closely, it sounded more like a chain saw at
wood than a metal-working tool. In fact, it wasn't the garage at
all but the artist Anusapati preparing his latest exhibition of
timber sculptures, which was to open at Cemeti Art House that
evening.

I went to the source of the sound and found Anusapati and his
assistant bent over a stalled chain saw, pulling furiously to
bring it once more to life. The gallery was full of sawdust and
the smell of freshly cut, green wood. They were just finishing
the last of the works, Diikat, a large bundle of short, split
timbers. For this work, many small pieces had been collected and
stacked to form a circle, like a giant coin standing on one edge,
or as if an enormous tree trunk were cut in cross section and
stood on its side.

Anusapati and his assistant were using a chain saw to trim the
ends to make them even, yet they were trimming them after they
had already been bundled. Why not trim each one before, I thought
later (it would be much easier dealing with single pieces than
this big, unwieldy stack)?

There may be several reasons, but we may also take this as a
clue to Anusapati's approach to materials; he responds to the
symbolic form of the work rather than its actual materials. For
example, he made this work as if it really were a massive single
trunk, as if the idea in his mind for the work had already
transformed small kindling into a giant log. The implication
leads us to a central question: can Anusapati (and can art)
improve on nature?

Many small plantation trees cannot really replace old growth
forests, even though most of us would wish it otherwise. Thus
Anusapati's work might represent our longing for environmental
healing despite the unlikely prospect. Indeed, much of
Anusapati's work in the exhibition takes the same melancholic
tone.

To this end, he does not use specially cut wood -- only found
timber and usually cheaper, common varieties. And while the
sounds I heard last Sunday reminded me more of a timber mill than
an artist's studio, Anusapati enacts a gentler, subtler
transformation of timber than any profiteering furniture exporter
or paper miller.

One of the most subtle works on show, I wish I belong here,
involved combining dried tree branches of different types. The
trunks were lashed together with string and their bifurcating,
dead branches were interlaced so that it was difficult to finally
tell the different trees apart. Thus a new whole tree was made
out of fallen, scattered brushwood. But the title tells more,
expressing once again a desire for rejuvenation and completion,
which refers equally to nature as to the peaceful coexistence of
different cultures (or different "species").

However in another work, unification has an insidious aspect.
Several long, thin saplings are bound and stitched together with
grasses to form a graceful arc, delicately balanced within the
gallery space. The saplings are bent uniformly, strengthened by
their agreement, and the ultimate form is aesthetic. But they are
equally retarded and restricted, prevented any free, individual
movements or expression (these reeds couldn't even bend with the
wind).

There is some figuration too, in several recognizable but
dysfunctional works. In Imbalanced, Anusapati has roughly hewed a
spinning top. The chiseled offcuts lie scattered around. Yet the
spindle is clearly off-center. This top could never spin. Indeed,
the path of the top is traced by a line marked in the timber
shavings. Evidently, this top simply rolls pathetically around
its skewed axis, a hopeless toy.

In another work, resembling a fork, two different woods are
again combined. One timber is used for the scoop and another for
the pointed tines. However, these sharpened prongs are hinged
freely to the rest of the work, quite useless for digging since
they readily give way. Like the top it's a useless tool,
precisely made so as not to work.

So the news of nature is not good: Anusapati rarely improves
upon it, but as it turns out, nor does he intend to. Indeed,
these odd and flawed objects, and the impossible hopes they
embody, comprise a tragedy overall. While old forests burn out of
control in Kalimantan and a haze settles over Indonesia,
Anusapati reflects the environmental imbalance that logging and
unchecked development entails.

His sensitive and careful handling of material releases some
powerful metaphors still inhering in nature despite the threat of
its rapid depletion, like a song or sound held within the very
grain of timber, crying out for care and respect.

A final work, Underground Sound, sums it up eloquently. Three
old fern stumps are hollowed out to resemble bells or gongs. They
lie scattered about on the gallery floor, some on their side, all
are idle and silent, perhaps waiting to be struck. What sound
would they make? A sad song I'm sure, rising up from the earth.