Eddie Hara translates social realities into art
By R. Fadjri
YOGYAKARTA (JP): Eddie Hara, 40, is an artist of the 1980s generation. The tremendous economic development under the previous government gave birth to businesspeople who wallowed in such material prosperity they discovered the pleasure of owning art.
The generation of artists maturing at the time, such as Eddie, flourished. The naive style of painting developed by Eddie and Heri Dono, and also the expressive semi-abstract style, became highly popular. They, along with a number of painters of the following generation, established a genre.
On the other side there is something very typical of the generation, namely its ability to face things outside themselves. Eddie has a very strong energy for play when responding to collective events which are the subject matter of his creative process. Social, political and environmental problems which would make people frown instead become light, joyous and funny.
It is possible for Eddie, with his ability to play with ideas and forms, to retain some distance from social realities which have attracted his attention. Consequently Eddie is freer to translate social realities in his own language.
At the beginning of his career Eddie was strongly inspired by the naive style. He frequently painted animals and metamorphic shapes, all of them symbolizing life's happiness. Time after time there was a striking display of bright colors.
He says, however, that since 1988 he has painted the darker side of social realities. "The figures in my paintings are not only funny and merry, they can be satanic, cynical, cruel, angry and ironical," he said.
But Eddie's reactions to social realities remain images of joy and fun. Moreover, he has adopted the idioms of mass culture -- Superman, Batman and Mickey Mouse -- that are all very close to the world of children.
The anger or cynicism toward certain events occurs through expressions describing joy and fun. The same is still apparent in his on-going solo exhibition titled Postcards from the Alps at Cemeti Gallery, Yogyakarta, from July 4 through July 31.
An example is his work On becoming the President. On a canvass of used cement bag paper measuring two square meters, Eddie, using acrylic paint, depicts the figure of Batman in predominantly yellow as the focus of attention.
Batman is wearing a suit with vertical lines, typical of prison inmates. There are self-portraits of people in masks, a skeleton of a man's head, and a figure with a pistol in his hand.
All those figures are depicted in a merry atmosphere -- wide- open mouths and funny hats.
His ideas are perhaps a cynical view of the figure of the president enjoying superpower status thanks to the support of the military, while at the same time the power smells of crime.
The very complex idea of power is made simple in Eddie's hands through the light language of mass culture. The style of the language can even tone down the original idea of power and the result is a different reaction.
Viewers usually smile or laugh in reaction to Eddie's expression of power, in a similar way to those viewing a caricature or a Donald Duck comic strip, in which cynicism, irony and humor blend together.
Although Eddie has lived in Switzerland since 1996, he has maintained his interest in the events of his country, including the political upheavals.
This is apparent in Postcard from the Alps, a series of 80 envelopes measuring 16 cm x 23 cm. On these used envelopes, complete with stamps, postmarks and addresses, Eddie put the fluctuations of his thoughts while he was abroad.
In one of his works figures are raising both their hands. The figures have various shapes of heads, leaving a funny impression. The text reads: "PDI Mega above all," referring to the ousted chairwoman of the Indonesian Democratic Party.
In another of his envelope works, Eddie affixed a map of Indonesia cut from Newsweek magazine. A text reading "A message to my lovely country" is next to a figure wearing a hat with horns and from his mouth come the words: Pro Democracy. Next is another figure, also wearing a hat with horns, with a long nose like a clown's, accompanied by the words For the people, by the people, from the people.
Although his own wife is Swiss, the awareness of his differences to Caucasians inevitably emerges when a number of his friends with colored skin directly experience racial problems.
Eddie depicts the racial problems through two works called Head Series. Each represents eight heads wearing hats. For Eddie the head shapes describe racial differences -- immigrants against white people -- which have also become a serious problem in Western Europe.