Year's roundup on art

By Margaret Agusta

JAKARTA (JP): The year 1994 was a mixed bag for the local art world. Certain trends continued and new issues emerged due to input from outside as well as changes within society.

Perhaps the most important exhibition of 1994 came as the year was waning. The Indonesia Fine Arts Foundation, established on June 8, held the Jakarta International Fine Arts Exhibition 1994 in cooperation with Bradbury International in October.

This was the first time the works of Indonesian artists were exhibited simultaneously in a show of retrospective scope along with works by major European, American and other Asian artists.

The fact that this exhibition provided the Jakarta art public with access to an unprecedented range of works by western artists, including Picasso, Chagall, Rosenquist and Lichtenstein, is praiseworthy in itself. The fact that works by Indonesian masters, such as Raden Saleh, Hendra Gunawan and Wakidi, from the rarely seen Collection of the President of Indonesia, were included, made this show very special indeed.

This exhibition, held in conjunction with a nationwide competition for Rp 23 million in grants from the Philip Morris Group, did much toward placing Jakarta on the international contemporary art map. This is heartening in light of the poor response the contemporary art segment of the Indonesian Cultural Exhibition in the United States got from galleries and museums in America in 1990-1991.

Foreign input

One of the most notable things about the year in art was that the Jakarta International Fine Arts Exhibition 1994 was not the only show offering a look at artworks by foreign artists.

This year the doors of the Indonesian art world were wide open to direct foreign input. That is not to say that exhibitions of works by foreign artists were unknown previously. It is just that 1994 saw more of such shows in a limited space of time than ever before.

In the past, most shows by foreign artists involved some kind of Indonesian connection. Most often the artist was resident in Indonesia, and was either showing with a mixed group of Indonesian and expatriate artists, or with other expatriate artists resident here.

This year saw a number of exhibitions of this kind, most notably the October show at the Duta Fine Arts Foundation in Kemang, South Jakarta, by seven Canadian artists inspired by Indonesia. And Group Sembilan, with its international mix of Indonesian, Korean, Chinese, Turkish and European artists, offered its usual mixed bag of artistic styles and approaches in a celebration of its 20th anniversary in April.

There were also a series of solo shows by foreign artists, among them exhibitions by Dutch painter Mella Jaarsma, Polish painter Jozef Kulesza, France's Andre Cottavoz, Filipino painter Pacita Abad, Bosnia's Mersad Berber and Croatian Edo Murtic.

A handful of interesting joint exhibitions were also brought in under the auspices of embassies and international business groups. Among these were the Sydney Inner City Alternative Art exhibition in March and the exhibition of works by 51 Spanish artists sponsored by the Embassy of Spain, also in June.

Local trends

The past year also saw a wealth of exhibitions, both joint and solo, by Indonesian artists in Jakarta and other major cities.

The galleries that sprang up so abundantly in the 1980s continued to make their presence felt with shows by a large number of artists offering a wide range of styles.

Among the most notable of the solo shows by Indonesian artists was that by Wahyoe Wijaya at Balai Budaya in Central Jakarta in April and by F.X. Harsono at the Fine Art Gallery on Jl. Merdeka Timur in Central Jakarta in July. These particular exhibitions reflected a trend in local contemporary art that has been gaining strength over the last few years as the public's awareness of human rights and the social role of art increases.

Wahyoe's canvases, graced with titles like The Disenfranchised abounded in distressing images of a society undergoing change. F.X. Harsono's exhibition of installation pieces focused on the lack of freedom of speech in society. Voice from the Throne set forth images of an oppressive hegemony, while Voices from the Base of the Dam/Devotional Visit used sound as well as images to convey the plight of people at the grassroots level of society.

Such social themes are re-emerging to take a stronger position in the Indonesian art world after a relative absence over two decades, in part due to a heated debate originating in the late 1950s and early 1960s over whether such themes were valid subjects in fine art. Up to now few contemporary artists have dealt consistently with such subject matter.

The trend toward dealing with issues of public concern was also visible in the Jakarta Fine Art Biennial IX at the Taman Ismail Marsuki as 1994 began. The Penggalian Kembali presentation by Semsar Siahaan in the center's Old Gallery was a jarring reminder of the gap between the rich and poor.

This particular biennial exhibition, which consisted primarily of installation works, also set the tone for a heated debate over the meaning and implications of post modernism in relation to Indonesian art, which went on throughout the year between artists and critics alike.

Another trend clearly apparent in this show and other joint and solo presentations throughout 1994 was toward the inclusion of various ethnic elements and themes into artworks.

This pronounced trend was seen specifically in a spate of exhibitions in Jakarta and Bali as the year came to a close. Among the artists choosing to explore such themes were Chusin, who showed at Andi's gallery in Jakarta in December, and Widayat and Sopandi, who opened shows in Bali as the year ended.