'In-Between' the medium and the message

'In-Between' the medium and the message

Farah Wardani, Contributor, Jakarta

What does it take to be an artist in Indonesia? There are three
choices. First, you can be a painter, and if you paint really
well, this bodes well with collectors -- you won't have to worry
about anything else, since your talent would guarantee your
security, at least financially.

Second, if you want to be considered "avant-garde" or
"contemporary", you can choose another medium such as
installation, mixed-media or performance art. Just don't paint,
since this would put you into the "commercially co-opted artists"
category.

Third, which could perhaps be the best option, you can be "in-
between", you create and sell your paintings but at the same
time, show that you can also make art in other media, which can
be anything in this age of pluralism.

This is an oversimplified description of the situation
concerning the relationship between artists and their choice of
media in the Indonesian art scene. If it tends to sound a bit
sarcastic, you don't have to take it too seriously, which perhaps
can be difficult, since medium itself has long been an issue of
conflict in Indonesian art.

The painting boom in the 1990s, when the price of paintings
exploded drastically and dragged this genre into the bourgeois
art market, caused a shock in esthetical development and caused a
series of complications in art valuation.

This particular problem is heavily underlined in the
exhibition titled In-Between: Perupa dalam Rotasi Media (In-
Between: Artists within the Rotation of Media). The exhibition
features works by 15 artists from different generations, each
displaying two-dimensional works accompanied by its alternatives
in the form of sculpture, mixed media installations and so on.

As explained in the curatorial introduction, the exhibition
means to present the interdisciplinary process of the artists'
creative explorations, reflecting their freedom in moving from
one medium to another. In the same way, it also tests their
understanding of the characteristics of the media with which they
work, in the context of skill and technique.

The so-called freedom, however, only circumvents the
formalistic discourse, as in defining the rotation of medium as
moving from one form to another.

The exhibition's great message to "revive the life of art
works (other than painting)" may sound a bit naive, because it
still cannot provide an answer to the question of the grounds
upon which we should evaluate the artists' consciousness in
choosing their medium. Is it their backgrounds, their processes,
their skills? Is it enough to justify that a painting is not the
only medium for an artist?

Could it be that "painting is not the center of the art
universe", even though by always cornering that genre in such a
way, we also unconsciously place focus on it? And how could this
idea contribute to the endlessly conflicting development of the
art world, particularly on the notion of esthetics?

The exhibition is not meant to provide the answer, since it
does not intend to question the choice of media, which is fair
enough. Then again, this very fact indicates the disturbing
manner of Indonesian art toward the medium.

Medium is mostly regarded as something that already exists,
waiting for artists to take and use. In most cases, from a
McLuhanian perspective, the medium is merely a vehicle for the
message, rather than an inherent component of the message, or
even the message itself. This also reflects the treatment of the
Indonesian society toward media, which hardly questions the
existence of media as a signifier of a context.

Nevertheless, such discontentment does not prevent this
exhibition from being enjoyable, since it does provide a
guideline for the audience on how to view the diverse approaches
of the artists in creating works of art in different media, from
Agus Suwage's illuminated mixed media work, to Krisna Murti's
video installation, and to Gregorius Sidharta's painted
sculpture.

Moreover, it also offers a chance to see how the artists' two-
dimensional works relate to their respective alternatives. In
this way, it gives the audience the experience of evaluating and
comparing different qualities -- speaking in terms of formalism
-- between the artworks of the same artist, which is intriguing.

Some of the artworks even correspond to each other, such as S.
Teddy D.'s Pose Phytagoras (oil on canvas, 2002), and Jamur
(metal sculpture). Both show the artist's sensitivity to form,
texture and color, which is translated into the characteristic
properties of the two-dimensional and three-dimensional materials
in a simple, yet perverse, way.

In a different manner, this kind of correspondence is also
shown by Sunaryo, with his two-dimensional work, Bali Dandan
(mixed media on canvas, 2003), which is surrounded by a series of
stone/metal sculpture. A master of detail, his skill is
unquestionable, as his pieces present his keen sense of
composition between subtlety and accentuation, even though he
overdoes it in adding superfluous details on the easel of the
canvas work, which spoils the nuance of the work.

More interestingly, we can see how the works of one artist
poses a juxtaposition among themselves in terms of quality.
Astari Rasjid, who is known as a painter, shows more strength in
her sculpture, Amour-Armour (2000), a life-size brassiere made
from bronze that speaks for itself, rather than her two-
dimensional Swarga Nunut, Neraka Katut (mixed media on canvas,
2003), which sends a convoluted messages with images of a
Javanese married couple and the World Trade Center disaster site,
excessively frilled with text and other elements.

Last, but not least, apart from the heavy burden underlining
the idea of this exhibition -- including the unanswerable
questions and problems concerning the discourse of medium in
Indonesian art -- it still opens up the possibility of rethinking
this issue and implies a hope for further explorations, which
makes it worth viewing.

In-Between: Perupa Dalam Rotasi Media at Andi Galeri, Jl.
Tanah Abang IV, No. 14, Central Jakarta, until March 22. Tel:
(021) 345 7130.