Sense of chaos colors the contemporary arts

By Chandra Johan

JAKARTA (JP): There is a time when art expresses softness, calmness and orderliness. We are spellbound, say, by visual composition elements: color, lines, texture, brushes, trickles, etc. We are also spellbound by the impression reflected in a painting -- objective or nonobjective -- which brings a comfortable feeling. We truly tend to like comfort, calmness and orderliness. With such paintings, we enter a fantasy world, perhaps our own fantasy, which is isolated and separated far from daily realities, crowds and tension. Our animal instincts, a primitive instinct, is suppressed and taken away through a piece of the fantasy world.

Now we enter the true reality: murder, kidnapping, looting, rape and bombing. News on such things have become regular consumption. Every day. We don't like it, but we consume it. For instance, we don't like horrible incidents, but we like to watch them. We could make an analogy of this with eating a hot chili. We know that eating a chili will make our mouth burn, the body perspire, the eyes wet and painful, but still we consume it. It seems that people have fantasies not only on calmness, orderliness, comfort, but also on chaos, riots and destruction. And in reality, violence and cruelty now surrounds us. Why must it be covered with the sweet works of art? Some artists are questioning it and some even express it in their works.

Through his Stone Order, Moelyono speaks about violence. He strongly dislikes violent acts committed by the masses. Stones were thrown at shops, houses, plazas, places of worship, supermarkets, etc. Moelyono made stones as a symbol of violence nurtured by the New Order.

Arahmaiani, through her Rape'n Rob also speaks about violence. She sees gender injustice as a result of today's social construction. She also witnesses the bitter realities gripping us like the burning of buildings, homes and the shooting of students. The reality of gender injustice to Arahmaiani is not only sexual, i.e. between man and woman, but in discourse. Who dominates discourse so far? Symbolically she expressed reality with fire and guns. But semiotically one can read the elements behind it: man, power, guns, the military and the New Order.

Nyoman Erawan's last works exhibited at Gallery Komaneka, Ubud, Bali, this month, indirectly also brings up violence through Ibu Bumi Nusantaraku sedang menangis, Cemas dan Sekarat (Mother Earth is crying. Worried and Dying). He resymbolizes the symbol of Bali, the cosmic mantra in Hindu culture, yet the theme is not free from the dimensions of destruction and death.

A new side in Indonesian contemporary art since the last few years has indeed entered a period of a sense of chaos. Through thoughts and concepts we are able to recognize a sense of chaos in artists like Arahmaiani or Moelyono. Yani -- Arahmaiani's nickname -- takes fire (from matches) as a symbol of oppression, while Moelyono takes stone as a symbol of destruction.

The sense of chaos is also reflected in Tubuh (Body) by Oky Arfie Hutabarat and Hafiz, displayed at Gallery Cipta II, Taman Ismail Marzuki in Central Jakarta not long ago. Through their works we see bodies (like torsos) placed upside-down, sprawled, some headless, some without feet. The presentation of bodies suggests a body without substance, bringing forward an idea about death. The arrangement of visual elements looks chaotic, avoiding regularity, let alone orderliness. Here, we are faced with tension.

Tension and chaos also appear in Entang Wiharso's works displayed at Java Gallery and Cemara Gallery recently.

It is interesting to compare their works with those of the Jakarta Painters Association, who take Citra '99 (Image '99) as the theme of their latest exhibition here. We are faced with a different ideology of aesthetic. In general, looking at their works, like the of works of Cak Kandar and Abbas Alibasjah, we feel expelled from reality, In the works, reality is absorbed and experienced hierarchically. In arranging the color, space, composition they refer to regularity and avoid chaos, not to mention violence. Only in Yoes Rizal's works do we find different aesthetic experiences. In his works, mostly abstract, we see a sense of chaos, which is brutal enough, although he does not speak of the brutality of reality. At least he expresses the aesthetic of brutality and that is reality too.

We are indeed entering a new side of aesthetic paradigm: a sense of chaos aesthetics. Through such a sense of aesthetic we meet themes of violence, absurdity, death and brutality of human life. Previous works of art carry aesthetic of orderliness -- dubbed by some observers as mainstream and formalist in modern discourse. However, for some artists who want to speak about the brutality of reality -- violence, terror, murder -- they can not express it "calmly". All the problems of life we are facing nowadays is the result of social and cultural construction and therefore must be deconstructed. It starts with the deconstruction of the aesthetic concept, so that society can see the other side of the world and not take it for granted.

Like the fine art world, the literature world is also entering a new side. In a short-stories reading staged earlier this month in the auditorium of the France Cultural Center in Yogyakarta, Agus Noor discussed violence in his work Hikayat Anjing (A Dog's Tale): "My mother is a dog. She yells at me all the time: 'Come here, puppy'. It is always the same words that come out of her mouth. Perhaps (because) of her dog instinct mother knows about my behavior. She beats me, soaking my head in the bathtub. Not yet satisfied, she pours water over me. Not yet (satisfied), she bits my ear. Blood spurts from my ear.

The quote from Agus Noor's short story is part of the portrait of today's literature and our life. We are entering a period of violence and chaos of daily realities. Art only reflects them, but art can also produce it (in the works). In fact, the reality itself is more fantastic than the art.