Art 'age-hibition' showcases young talent

Farah Wardani, Contributor, Jakarta

It would be small wonder if you were flabbergasted if you entered a gallery and found yourself looking at a scene on a video screen like this: An arm stretches out while the hand of the other arm slices its skin with a cutter, inscribing the words, "Victoria the Victorian" with the blood that is dripping from the pores. It might be even more surprising if you regarded this as art.

The scene is part of a video performance work, Victoria the Victorian (Reza Afisina, 2000), one of around 70 artworks of 34 visual artists from Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Bali, on display at Edwin's Gallery, Jakarta.

The exhibition's main curatorial ground, as can be seen from the title, is age -- youth, to be exact. The criterion "young" is defined as artists "under 30" who have proven their ability in developing their art portfolio. Therefore, it is art of twentysomething young adults, or "post-adolescents".

Presenting work of the young always promises something new, progressive, or sometimes even a breakthrough. So what does this exhibition say about the world of new Indonesian post- adolescents?

The answer is like society itself: diverse, vague and plural. The artists selected are from a wide range of specializations and backgrounds, as can be seen from the works on display.

However, paintings still dominate around 70 percent of the exhibited works, the rest being sculpture, mixed-media works, installations and digital works.

Consequently, there is still a great sense of "showroom" spirit in this exhibition in general, which can be seen in many of the paintings.

Most of the works seem to be "ready-to-display", while none appears to have been made following the curatorial basis, except Almost Thirty (Indra Ameng, 2002). Nevertheless, it still somehow manages to say much about what is happening to this coming-of-age generation.

The generation that has grown up with the New Order, an oil boom, mass industrialization, popular culture, MTV, reform, globalization and so on, has matured in a multidimensional way, and is represented, consciously or not, by many of the artists here.

Some of the works stand out, showing the artists' exploration of alternative media and ease in expressing themselves, speaking out about various issues in different implementations and indicating an urge to get away from the limitations of "high art".

In this way they are challenging themselves as well as the audience.

Some of them are harsh, confronting dark sides and hidden areas of the senses, such as a visceral recalling of pain (in the video referred to above), and one work in a form of a death announcement ad of its own artist Ketika Aku Melihat Kematianku (When I see my death), by Johannes Christiawan, 2002. Another type of a visceral adventure is also displayed in a digital video work Untitled (Aditya Satria, 2002) and an installation piece No We Are Not (Ade Darmawan, 2002), which questions the relation between the senses and the media.

Others are light, ironic and humorous, playing around with trivialities and "low-art" materials, such as a satirical comic strip on religious fundamentalism on aluminum (Abdul Toyib: Kisah Seekor Babi Muslim, Bambang "Toko" Wicaksono, 2002) and a twisted caricature of urban life on embroidery (Si Kepala Jeruk Nipis, Eko Nugroho, 2002).

There is also Almost Thirty, a series of pocket-camera pictures of city youngsters aged from 27 to 29, with an album containing their short biodata and notes of their hopes before reaching the age of 30.

Apart from those alternative media works, some artists still present their work on canvas, the so-called "high-art" medium, but with different attitudes.

There are canvases with images of rock 'n roll (My So-Called Tarot World, Arie Dyanto, 2002 and Sejenak Bersama Adolf Hitler dan Bob Marley, Wedhar Riyadi, 2002), intellectual parody (Pijatan Foucault, Budi Kustarto, 2002), and formalist nuances of living textures and colors that speak for themselves, like Perfume (Handiwirman, 2002) and Melihat Jauh (Rudi Mantovani, 2002).

One point of interest is that Perfume is displayed on the wall facing Melihat Jauh, while in the space in between, Victoria the Victorian is set facing No We Are Not. The intersecting tension of the different effects between the new-media shock therapy of the senses and the subtlety of textural language on canvas makes for an intriguing juxtaposition.

Somehow, the whole exhibition can be said to be a juxtaposition between "high art" and "low art", conventional and radical, "collector's items" and "non-collector's items", which, on the one hand, appears to show an ambiguity of standards. Yet on the other, the ambiguity itself might as well represent the shifting process of the young generation, in coping with their restlessness in being raised in a multidimensional environment, with so many polarities and confrontations of values.

Another arresting point of this exhibition is that the artists rarely bear the echoes of the post-reform political activist art that once was a major trend in the Indonesian contemporary art world, reflecting the exhaustion of selling such a theme and the urge to explore other things, even the most trivial things in their everyday lives. For this world has suffocated them too much and art still works as an escape and, probably, still promises a way to continue maturing.

Art is still fun for the young, or at least they try to make it that way, which is quite relieving. This exhibition, which looks like a salad-bowl mixture of young artists, might as well be called a funfair of the young. It is meant to dazzle you from the aftereffect of experiencing the artworks, leaving you confused, entertained, amused, teased, shocked, bored or simply indifferent -- and that's where the fun is.

Age-hibition at Edwin's Gallery, Jakarta, will last until Sept. 29.