Yani's art brings reality to the forefront

Yani's art brings reality to the forefront

Text and photos by Tjahjono Ep.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Painter Yani Halim's latest show at Kedai
Kebun, Jl. Tirtodipuran No. 3, has an odd English title: Informal
Chicken Display.

Yani says the exhibition is about realities which are often
neglected because they are considered trivial. All 18 of his
works are either 40cm by 40cm or 50cm by 50cm. Their titles, like
the exhibition title, are in a clumsy style: Ready Eat!, Easy
Story after Falling and Informal Therapy for The Burning Faith.

Yani, who sharpened his skills at the Indonesian Fine Arts
Institute in Yogyakarta, expresses his ideas by combining the two
art forms.

"I combine cartoon and painting techniques to achieve
effective and efficient symbols to translate my ideas into the
artworks," says the painter, who was born in the East Java
regency of Nganjuk on Dec. 16, 1969.

Since 1991, Yani has held numerous exhibitions in Yogyakarta
and Bali.

In Feet of the Second Dark Cloudy, a 50cm by 50cm oil on
canvas, Yani describes a single subject: thick dark clouds. While
in The Second Fool Romantic Journey, of the same size, he also
has a single subject, a fly, which dominates the bright orange
background plane.

He says clouds and flies are omnipresent in daily life but
they are largely ignored, as if they were "nonexistent".

Yani's works give the impression he is a minimalist. This
reading is evident not only from the pared down choice of
objects, but also because his paintings lack frames.

"Single objects can explain ideas better than many, complex
ones," he explains.

But he does not completely reject multiple images, as in Ready
Eat!, Easy Story after Falling, Informal Therapy for The Burning
Faith and Everything's Fine With a Whistle.

In Ready Eat a male cook, sporting wings like an angel,
carries a tray containing a shining circle. In the middle of the
canvas is a sketch of a pair of lips, out of which sprouts a long
tail.

Informal Therapy for The Burning Faith consists of a circle in
perspective, angle-like creatures walk around the form. One of
the creatures carries a sprinkler similar to one that farmers use
for watering their plants.

While the central elements of Easy Story after Falling consist
of a photograph of a face and a halo. In Guilty by the Mouth, the
objects another pair of lips appears, this time with a long tail
clipped with clothes pegs.

About the Mouth combines a mixture of the artist's favorite
motifs: a face, clothes pegs, a fly, a halo and cartoons. The
motifs assemble as the face of a "saint" wearing clothes pegs
with a fat fly perching on his chin.

Although these works are mostly minimalist, all the lines and
brush strokes create a strong sense of harmony and peace. With
fine colored linework the works have a decidedly religious
nuance. Although, the religious sentiment is skewered with irony
as is evident with his imaging of lips pinched by clothes pegs.

Yani says he realizes his choice of colors is "unconventional"
but that esthetics is not the only consideration.

"I use colors I don't like to express my ideas," he says.

His innovative use of cartoon and painting techniques is a
daring experiment.