Exhibition chronicles Pattern's Indonesian journey

Exhibition chronicles Pattern's Indonesian journey

JP/19/LITHO

checked -- JSR
Exhibition chronicles Pattern's Indonesian journey

Pattern gives form to Indonesia

M. Taufiqurrahman
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Seventeen years may be a long period for an individual to
fully grasp the true nature of an object, but for Canadian artist
Ken Pattern the duration is barely enough to achieve such an
objective; his current art exhibition is evidence of a man trying
to make sense of it all.

In fact, the lengthy period was what Pattern needed to go back
to square one.

When he arrived in the country in late 1988, Pattern adopted
surrealism to delineate his state of mind -- the cultural and
climatic shocks he experienced landing in a tropical country
after spending most of his time in a cold climate.

These days, Pattern has once again embraced surrealism to
portray the conditions of a country he thought he knew well after
his lengthy on-and-off stay.

The recurrent style bookended Pattern's sojourn into the realm
of realism he adopted to give an account of the city's loss of
innocence.

Pattern's current exhibition, the 12th he has held in
collaboration with the Canadian Women's Association (CWA),
displays drawings from all styles and periods.

Although a large number of items on display at the exhibition
show the juxtaposition of rich and poor -- traditional
neighborhoods and glass-and-steel modern construction -- some of
his early works hint at the style Pattern took when he first
arrived here.

Hanging next to his realist paintings are pictures of icebergs
floating on a sun-soaked tropical beach adorned with tall coconut
trees.

Pattern jokingly said that some visitors at past exhibitions
believed that the portrayal was realistic. "A couple told me that
they had seen them somewhere," he told The Jakarta Post.

Although surrealist in their theme, the drawings looked
authentic -- just like photographs of actual views. Pattern said
that one small drawing could take 100 hours to complete and the
blue of the seawater was made up of dozens of layers of color.

The main attraction of the exhibition is Pattern's signature
black-and-white, portrait-like drawings of Jakarta skyscrapers
and their very antithesis, the city's shanty towns.

Pattern has also devoted a lot of his drawings to portraying
the detail of shanties, especially those built on the banks of
the Ciliwung River.

One of the drawings shows rows of makeshift houses built on
the riverbank close to Manggarai railway station, South Jakarta.
Towering above the shanties is the building that contains the
erstwhile plush shopping mall, Pasaraya Manggarai.

"When the picture was drawn, Pasaraya Manggarai was still one
of the city's luxurious shopping centers," Pattern's wife Helen
Vanwel told the Post. Helen added that despite their filthy
appearance, the shanties were clean and neat inside.

Also on display at the exhibition were a handful of Pattern's
recent surrealist works, which dealt with his confusion at
Indonesians -- especially Javanese people and their culture.

He uses the symbol of a labyrinth to represent the people's
complex behavior.

However, there was a period when Pattern just played simply
with his pallete. A number of drawings are straightforward
portraits of beautiful landscapes.

Pattern's latest drawings show idyllic beaches in New Zealand
he visited recently.

"In these pictures, there is nothing to say other than to
accept the beauty of the earth and that we should appreciate the
beauty all around us," he said.

-- Profile of Ken Pattern on Page 20

In box:

Ken Pattern charity exhibition runs through May 28 at the Lobby
Level I of Gran Melia Hotel, Jl. HR Rasuna Said, South Jakarta.