Sculptors stick to what they know in Jakarta

Sculptors stick to what they know in Jakarta

By Yusuf Susilo Hartono

JAKARTA (JP): A statue of a goddess, playing a mandolin in a
standing position wearing a transparent dress with her long hair
blown by the wind welcomes visitors at Taman Ismail Marzuki's
Galeri Cipta in Central Jakarta.

The statue -- made of fiber glass and twice the size of a
normal human being has been created by 58-year-old Suhartono H.
from Banyuwangi, East Java -- is just one of the statues being
displayed at Pameran Karya Pematung Jakarta 2001 (Jakarta
sculptors' works exhibition 2001) from Sept. 5 to Sept. 30.

The statue appears to be distanced from the visitors, because
it has a heavenly face and not the familiar face of anyone's
mother, aunt or sister.

There is also a scorched body, a Eurasian woman playing music,
a Kama Sutra love-making subject, a man guarding his neighborhood
community, alienated people in low-cost apartments, a body stuck
with many hypodermic needles, toilets and chamber pots with
intravenous tubes, a family wailing over a victim, a tied-up
accordion and a child praying for beloved souls.

The aim of the exhibition has been to provide freedom to
sculptors to come up with different forms of spatial expression,
using the form known as installation art.

"By giving this freedom we expected to see a kind of doubt
that could be categorized as an evaluation of the development of
sculpture in Jakarta in 2001," said Hanung Mahadi, a sculptor and
graduate of Jakarta Arts Institute, who is also the exhibition
coordinator.

However, the numerous creations of Jakarta's 26 sculptors are
still dominated by sculpture only. It indicates how loyal they
still are to the old sense of sculpture inherited from the
previous millennium and originating from the West.

It seems difficult for local artists to free themselves from
the shackles of old meanings from the West, which are deeply
rooted here and have become a kind of art religion for them.

It's comparable to the difficulty a bird would have to fly
away from its cage even though the door had been opened wide.
Even in the name of freedom, the bird might die as it doesn't
know how to survive.

Different media

Among the installation art displayed at the exhibition is A
nation that can't piss and shit, created by 42-year-old Agus
Jolly of Kediri, East Java. It's a blend of different media
comprising bamboo, dozens of intravenous tubes, several toilets,
chamber pots, lamps and strings.

A clay sculpture Apocalypse stands nearby, presented by Benny
Ronald Tahalele of Makassar, South Sulawesi, a 1981 graduate of
the Jakarta Institute of the Arts (IKJ). It represents a man
looking at the sky, both arms stretched but cut here and there,
with 18 hypodermic needles and joss sticks piercing his
shoulders, neck and chest. Is this the way that modern men seek
the divine message?

Meanwhile, 49-year-old Sibolga-born feminist sculptor Dolorosa
Sinaga attempts to make a close-up picture of social and physical
death through her Pieta, a bronze work of 2001.

The IKJ lecturer is now active in domestic and overseas
displays presenting a group of six women grieving over a dead
body on their laps, with one of them screaming in contrast to the
others' drooping pose.

Dolorosa's statues are characterized by an frenetic
atmosphere, with mouths yelling. Her other sculpture represents a
woman's figure flapping her dance garb. The hard metal is in
Dolorosa's hands, softened to show the dancer's flexible swinging
movement.

She's not alone in turning rigidity into flexibility. Hanung
and Iriantine Karnaya also share this skill. Iriantine, now a
fine art lecturer at her alma mater, the Bandung Institute of
Technology (ITB), tries to form a pliant and stereoscopic
impression through her Festival I and II. The latter is like
tissue paper being pulled from its box, a flexible attitude in
the process of change, even in the face of those squeezing our
luck.

Hardiman Radjab comes with his surprising Message in the
Bottle. The IKJ lecturer, also engaged in theater, dance, film,
ads and car decoration, utilizes an old, open bag filled with
water and a floating bottle bearing the word "Help!". The inner
part of the bag cover is erected with the picture of a coconut
tree and cloudy sky. One can imagine a tragedy and a screaming
victim.

His other creation, Accordion & Lilliput, presents an
accordion rendered silent for being tied up all over by dozens of
Lilliputian men. This drama makes our collective memory awake to
the long hard time when those in power put a bridle on freedom of
speech. Now that freedom has been regained, many people lose
their restraint and sometimes use harsh words, at demos as well
as in the mass media.

Besides death, wanderings and prayers, life needs love as
well. Sculptor Altje Ully Panjaitan ventures to give a touch of
love through her work Gibran. This 1999 sculpture stands firmly
like a gravestone with affectionate expressions carved on a
glazed surface. And the wood chips left at its base resemble
falling leaves gathered by the wind to revere the pair, Gibran
and May.

Statues, according to Roedjito of the Jakarta Art Council's
Committee of Arts, constitute a manifestation of the art of
object-modeling or sculpture in space. Their independent
existence challenges nature or open space, radiating their force
into space and also absorbing space, making them more than just
artistic objects.