Heri Dono's works freezes dusty moments

Yusuf Susilo Hartono, Contributor, Jakarta

A lady waves to a large-sized horned creature wearing red shoes and standing on a wheel. The three-eyed creature has its mouth wide open and from its inside, a diminutive figure emerges, while on its back, stands a figure with a blue-hair crest.

Clad in a black dress with a red heart-shaped picture on her chest, the lady carries a kris on her waist from which sprout two breasts. Standing beside her is a man with a dog's head, a knife on his waist while his red genitals hang from his groin.

The illustration depicts the latest work by Yogyakarta artist Heri Dono titled Life as a Cartoon (2002).

The piece was created when Heri was an artist in residence in Vermont, the United States. There, he created works which dwelled on problems in the contemporary world but viewed through the eyes of comic-book characters like Superman and Woody Woodpecker.

The piece is now on display with 19 other works. Only one of the exhibited works was created last year, while the rest were created this year.

The exhibition shows that Heri feels himself provoked by his own works -- either his installation and performing arts which were previously exhibited at a number of places, including Parangtritis and the yard of the Yogyakarta Palace in Yogyakarta; Jakarta and even abroad, like in Australia, Japan and the United States. These latest works were also born out of a self-addressed question, "What is the substance of installation and performing arts I have taken up?"

Born in Jakarta on June 12, 1960, Heri Dono studied at the Indonesian Institute of Art (ISI) in Yogyakarta and then became artist in residence in various museums and foundations abroad, including Australia, England and New Zealand. Since 198 he has created 42 pieces of installation art and 26 performing arts. Unlike paintings, which rely on personal expression, individual freedom and individualism, installation and performing arts are collaborative works.

The significance of Heri Dono's solo exhibition this time, the 16th of its kind since his first in 1988, has always been that he paints from anything which he had previously expressed in his "own" installation and performing art works.

How is visual language expressed in Heri's paintings? The artist is consistent with his previous visual expressions in a sense that the created figures and objects are all presented from one side, flat, caricature-like and, most importantly, laughter provoking.

And with his outstanding creativity -- either due to his talent, local and international influence and his reading materials -- Heri breathes life into characters, which are unique to him, along with a blend of humanity, beastliness, lust, materialism, military, politics, power, science and technology and even sexual drive.

The created characters -- or just call them Heri Dono's crazy puppets -- are still freely presented like animal-head man, three-eyed man and a woman with four breasts. Others may call these things absurd but for Heri, who has taken as his models the glass paintings of Sastrogambar, there is nothing new about them. Heri uses gay colors for his paintings - dark brown, yellow, light yellow, pink and green but always capable of matching them with white to create balance.

It is interesting to trace all his painting to the sources of his inspiration -- the installation and performing arts. But it's impossible to track them all within a short time.

Kereta Api Satu Roda (One-Wheel Train, 2002), for instance, was created following a discussion on the state of our train affairs, which resembled a circus. His Fatherland=Shadow of Journey (2002) was inspired by a performance in Fukuoka Prefecture Art Museum in Japan (1994), which criticized human beings' existence on earth.

Those who never seen Heri Dono's installation or performing arts might take the ongoing exhibition as a new experience. But if one has viewed his works before, there might be a moment of struggle to trace back the paintings' sources of inspiration. One might find it or not, depending on how strong one's memory is, or how strong the painting is capable of freezing fluid moments in Heri Dono's dusty installation or performing arts.

Heri Provokes Heri exhibition runs until July 7 at Nadi Gallery, Jl. Kedoya Raya 53, West Jakarta. Tel. 5818129