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.