Anusapati's works in wood an austere vision of life

By Carla Bianpoen

JAKARTA (JP): Art historians, art critics and the public may well be at a loss when it comes to the distinction between art and craft, but the contemporary crafts movement is proceeding to erase that division, and at a surprisingly accelerated tempo.

The Indonesian Contemporary Craft exhibition, held at Galeri Nasional recently, provides a significant hint in this regard. In an auspicious exhibition, works that one would call handicraft, utensils, applied art and contemporary craft were displayed in a manner that often made it hard to draw the line between art and craft. It must also be said, however, that accepting ordinary bamboo baskets as art of an elevated level will not be easy.

Whatever the opinion, long before the discourse had even entered the country, Indonesia's master craftsman Anusapati had already started crafting art. Numerous exhibitions within and outside his home country have seen his works sought after by art connoisseurs. Their strong attraction may lie in the aesthetic lines used within an austere simplicity and an extremely refined finish.

Anusapati is certainly not the only artist who uses wood for his artistic expressions. But as curator Hendro Wiyanto said, his treatment of wood as a working medium and the sources of his inspiration have made him a pioneer when it comes to integrating local culture in contemporary wood sculptures.

The current exhibition, displayed at Galeri Nadi may be considered confirmation of how craft can transcend boundaries and become works that many serious art connoisseurs consider genuine art. Shapes of boats, mortars and pestles, musical instruments, farming and fishing tools and other objects made from wood have been part of Javanese rural life for centuries. However in the hands of this master, they surpass their mere utilitarian function and emerge as stylized wooden sculptures.

The series, titled Genesis, highlights his most recent works (2001) and consists of six wooden sculptures -- all egg-shaped and in the size of an adult human head. The artist's love for and obsession with carving is evident in the relief features, the rectangular geometrical forms and semi-circles chiseled or carved into the wooden eggs. Using different kinds of wood in the last two eggs from the series, Anusapati lets two colors accentuate the dynamic rhythm of his finely finished wooden sculptures.

Genesis is also the title of the exhibition, indicating "a new possibility, a new construction or relationship. It might be reconciliation," Hendro Wiyanto quotes the artist as saying in his curatorial introduction. It is not clear whether he means reconciling manual with technical tools.

Naturally resistant to artificial and restrictive classifications and dissatisfied with consumerist trends that tend toward extreme modernity and opulence, Anusapati chose to work in wood, a simple and unpretentious material, when he came back from art study in Brooklyn and began the search for an appropriate medium. In all probability, the characteristics of wood add substance to his austere vision of life. It also contains a certain energy that supports life.

As one ponders his wooden creations, they emerge as bearers of meaning, reflecting the time, place and culture in which they were used as utilitarian tools. Yet they also appear to bridge the past with the present in a transcendental but always recognizable form.

Anusapati has worked with wood since the early 1990s. He likes its simplicity, bareness, and the way the natural lines narrate the age and history of the tree from which it was once a part. Drawing his inspiration from the specific features of wood, he usually leaves the fissures, fractures and other faults in the wood, going over the texture with his loving hands, intensely sensing its strength and taking in the scent of its fibers.

Awareness of the environmental implications of wanton destruction of trees has made him consciously choose only those logs that have been left behind, or by using other types of wood usually considered as cheap firewood.

Sometimes the works of this 41-year-old artist are just stylized artifacts, but at other times they are more like poetic narratives, as they are in the Genesis series. In most cases, the placement of the object becomes extremely important, and helps to bring out its artistic features. And as in installation art, the space in which the objet d'art is positioned is critical.

This has been well understood by the curator at the Nadi exhibition, unlike the curator of the all-Indonesian exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art last year, who ironically dumped an Anusapati work in a far corner.

Featuring 13 works, Genesis runs through Aug. 5 at Nadi Gallery, Jl. Kedoya Raya 53, Jakarta 11520 (tel. 581-8129). E- mail: info@nadigallery.com.