Year's roundup on art

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.