'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.