Kelenturan dan Kekuatan (Flexibility and Strength)

Flexibility and Strength (Lot 431) portrays an icon in leading Indonesian contemporary artist I Nyoman Masriadi's body of work, the black figure. Masriadi had settled upon painting the black figure as early as 2001, and the present lot is one in a genealogy of pictures where the black figure is contextualized and recontextualized. To the artist, black is a colour symbolizing beauty and strength, inseparable from each other. As an artist, sometimes a concept drives the creation of a work; at other times, it is a technical challenge, or in Masriadi's case, a sheer desire for painting a certain pose - the outstretched arm, which is a classic subject in the demonstration of mastery of the human anatomy across all ages in art history.
Referencing an icon in art history, Michelangelo's fresco painting, The Creation of Adam, Flexibility and Strength removes the lofty religious context of creation, and instead leaps into the subject of power, which is central to the artist's thematic concerns. The figure in the painting reaches backwards in an almost impossible posture, defying anatomical possibility. And yet the handling of the body and the foreshortening is perfectly executed. Masriadi's painted figure strikes as heroic a pose as any, but in the sparse context of the painting, seems devoid of purpose and intent. But if one understands, in Masriadi's world, flexibility and strength are valued as positive attributes in overcoming the limits of the everyday.