Januri and his journey called life

Januri and his journey called life

Christina Schott, Contributor/Jakarta

Januri is a young artist from East Java who appears to be going places fast, as evidenced by the fact that an exhibition of his work is currently showing in Berlin.

However, things could have all turned out very differently. "If I had not been accepted into art school, I would have studied agriculture," says the 27-year-old.

The son of a farmer in a coastal village in Tuban, East Java, Januri says that he had always wanted to be an artist all his life. When he was a small boy, he spent hours drawing pictures in the sand in front of his house or at the beach where the fishermen unloaded their catches.

He heard about the Yogyakarta's Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) in Yogyakarta when he was third grader in elementary school, and at that moment made up his mind to study there.

Accordingly, he decided to leave home at the age of 15 to go to the arts preparatory senior high school (SMSR) in Yogyakarta.

In 1996, Januri, a natural talent, successfully passed the enrollment tests at the institute on his first attempt, and since then he has been studying fine arts there.

His pictures are mainly acrylic paintings depicting people with square contours and pointed noses, cubistic, stylized, in earth tones or all in blue. Often Januri's figures are positioned in strange situations, in a kind of hovering state, floating in the air -- like the farmer in Tidak Ada Yang Dikerjakan (There is nothing to do), who hangs with his feet upside down above an all- concrete city, his shovel idle in his hands as there is no soil to dig any more.

In an exhibition at the Vanessa Art House in Jakarta at the beginning of this year, Januri presented a series of black-and- white paintings, very similar to his drawings in which he usually creates an atmosphere that is far darker than in his color paintings.

His typical protagonists, with their square bodies, often lack hands or feet -- sometimes even heads -- to symbolize their confusion about how to make a living. Other pictures show cool, blue mountains. Januri painted these after he returned from a stay in the tiny Principality of Liechtenstein in Europe last year: "At that time I was still influenced by the freshness of Europe," the artist explained.

Indonesian sculptor and painter FauZie As'ad, who also studied at the arts school in Yogyakarta, invited Januri to come to Liechtenstein, where he has lived for almost ten years with his family, so that they could jointly prepare an exhibition at the Tribal Art Gallery in Berlin.

"I came back to Yogyakarta to initiate an exchange program for young artists," FauZie said, recalling how Januri had decided to visit Europe. "Januri was really interested, so we became friends and I invited him over." Gallery owner Matthias Busse agreed to stage the exhibition, and so Januri's works are at the moment being exhibited in the German capital, together with works by FauZie, and Katirin, another painter from Yogyakarta.

"Januri's art is really mature, despite his age," Busse said.

The trip to Europe has meant a partial fulfillment of the young painter's dream: "Before I finally settle down somewhere, I want to travel a lot and experience as much as possible. Only after that will I feel mature enough to start my own family."

The ambitious young artist started to look for international contacts at a very early stage.

Via the internet, he took part in a competition in Thailand and was invited to visit there two years ago. In 2001, he won the Nokia Art Award Indonesia, while he was an Indofood Art Award finalist for the two last years and a Phillip Morris Art Award finalist in 1998, 2000 and 2003.

In April, Januri participated, together with his group Gelaran Budaya (Cultural stage), in an artists exchange program with Malaysia: Four painters from Yogyakarta worked for a month with artists in Kuala Lumpur. The four exchange partners from Malaysia will start their visits to Central Java at the end of this month. "Exchanges between artists groups is very rare in our region, usually due to financial constraints. But this experience was very useful -- I am really looking forward to having them (the Malaysians) come over here," Januri explained.

"FauZie As'Ad, Januri und Katirin", until Aug. 28 at Galeri Abadi, Wilhelmsaue 137, 10715 Berlin