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Lot Essay
One of the most visually powerful recent paintings of Indonesian contemporary painter I Nyoman Masriadi to come to market, Ga Lucu Banget (Really Not Funny) overwhelms the viewer with its wry sense of humour, laced with satire, all cleverly composed into an intriguing pictorial narrative. The impossible scene of a bearded man transposed across blazing skies by a simultaneously heroic and villainous big black bird attests to the imaginative potential of Masriadi's work, and seeks a direct engagement with the viewer on both an aesthetic as well as a narrative front.
Distinctive in Masriadi's oeuvre is a sense that nothing is sacrilegious; anyone and anything, even the painter himself, can become a subject of lampoonery and satire. The painter's brand of humour and visual wit is pointed yet subtle, direct yet coy, emerging clearly in the various guises of the painted figures that inhabit his works. Masriadi is one of Southeast Asia's leading contemporary painter of the 1970s generation, with an oeuvre firmly centred around paintings of muscular dark-skinned protagonists in their supermacho worlds. Born in Bali, Indonesia, Masriadi studied painting in the 1990s at the Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta. Even though he excelled in art college, he refused to graduate from art school, knowing that teachers would seek favors from him in the form of his paintings to permit him to graduate.
Masriadi's distinction as an artist lies most clearly in his choice of medium; he focuses on the practice of painting and sees his destiny as an artist tied to the fate and possibilities inherent in painting. The visual imageries and narratives in his paintings are strongly influenced by Japanese anime, cyber-gaming and comics. Many of his paintings are also autobiographical to varying extent. Underlined by an almost detached and objective daily observation of people, the artworld and society at large, his visual vocabulary is striking, continuously fresh and always relevant.
Some of Masriadi's earliest works having left art college drew visual references from traditional Balinese art and cubist treatment of the body with their simultaenous perspective and fragmentation. Very soon upon graduation, Masriadi had discovered the immense potential of the colour black: as a symbolic colour of strength and depth, and as a colour in which tonal nuances could be brought out. Alongside the discovery of black which he terms his 'last weapon' as a painter, Masriadi also began to find pleasure in painting bodybuilders, sportsmen and muscular figures with clearly enunciated muscular parts in situations where power, dominance, competition and rivalry are brought to the surface and revealed.
In recent paintings, Masriadi has advanced beyond painting these iconic figure types to developing compelling and relatively more complex narrative-centred works. Ga Lucu Banget (Really Not Funny) is an outstanding example of the painter's recent works, where the focus is cast on the narrative situation depicted.
The crow-like black bird in Ga Lucu Banget (Really Not Funny) is firmly composed in the pictorial centre, its wings massively spread and foreshortened in an extravagant showcase of the painter's technical abilities. The immense scale of the painting challenged Masriadi to paint an element that could command the pictorial space and he met the challenge more than adequately with the anatomical accuracy and finely rendered feathers of the black bird. The intriguing antagonist in the picture is a bearded man, suited out impeccably and rather professorial in appearance. He is, however, rather unfortunately plucked out of his comfort zone and transported across a seemingly bomb-ridden sky by the bird. A dialogue box lends a clue to his state of mind - sangat tidak lucu translates as seriously not funny.
The apparent impossibility of such a scene is what makes Masriadi's inventiveness as a painter even more apparent. Some of his most powerful works produced have in fact been critiques of gallerists and fellow artists, delivered as visual parables. For the painter, the difference between a friend and a foe is invariably clear. He adopts the vantage point of a slight outsider to the Indonesian artworld, observing patterns and instances of power relations between different players such as gallerists, artists and collectors. If taken as a visual allegory, Ga Lucu Banget (Really Not Funny) makes a veiled commentary on a particular type of relationship in the artworld - one that is non-reciprocal, in which the actions and antics of one is not appreciated by another.
Masriadi's human antagonist stands between danger and safety, bravery and trepidation. Flown across troubled skies, he is seemingly airlifted out of troubled straits but one bears the expectation that his fate is not going to be any better in the new unknown locale the black bird is going to take him. Revealed here is a wry attitude towards a certain human vulnerability borne out of a consciousness of the vicissitudes of life - who knows where life is taking us the next moment?
Distinctive in Masriadi's oeuvre is a sense that nothing is sacrilegious; anyone and anything, even the painter himself, can become a subject of lampoonery and satire. The painter's brand of humour and visual wit is pointed yet subtle, direct yet coy, emerging clearly in the various guises of the painted figures that inhabit his works. Masriadi is one of Southeast Asia's leading contemporary painter of the 1970s generation, with an oeuvre firmly centred around paintings of muscular dark-skinned protagonists in their supermacho worlds. Born in Bali, Indonesia, Masriadi studied painting in the 1990s at the Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta. Even though he excelled in art college, he refused to graduate from art school, knowing that teachers would seek favors from him in the form of his paintings to permit him to graduate.
Masriadi's distinction as an artist lies most clearly in his choice of medium; he focuses on the practice of painting and sees his destiny as an artist tied to the fate and possibilities inherent in painting. The visual imageries and narratives in his paintings are strongly influenced by Japanese anime, cyber-gaming and comics. Many of his paintings are also autobiographical to varying extent. Underlined by an almost detached and objective daily observation of people, the artworld and society at large, his visual vocabulary is striking, continuously fresh and always relevant.
Some of Masriadi's earliest works having left art college drew visual references from traditional Balinese art and cubist treatment of the body with their simultaenous perspective and fragmentation. Very soon upon graduation, Masriadi had discovered the immense potential of the colour black: as a symbolic colour of strength and depth, and as a colour in which tonal nuances could be brought out. Alongside the discovery of black which he terms his 'last weapon' as a painter, Masriadi also began to find pleasure in painting bodybuilders, sportsmen and muscular figures with clearly enunciated muscular parts in situations where power, dominance, competition and rivalry are brought to the surface and revealed.
In recent paintings, Masriadi has advanced beyond painting these iconic figure types to developing compelling and relatively more complex narrative-centred works. Ga Lucu Banget (Really Not Funny) is an outstanding example of the painter's recent works, where the focus is cast on the narrative situation depicted.
The crow-like black bird in Ga Lucu Banget (Really Not Funny) is firmly composed in the pictorial centre, its wings massively spread and foreshortened in an extravagant showcase of the painter's technical abilities. The immense scale of the painting challenged Masriadi to paint an element that could command the pictorial space and he met the challenge more than adequately with the anatomical accuracy and finely rendered feathers of the black bird. The intriguing antagonist in the picture is a bearded man, suited out impeccably and rather professorial in appearance. He is, however, rather unfortunately plucked out of his comfort zone and transported across a seemingly bomb-ridden sky by the bird. A dialogue box lends a clue to his state of mind - sangat tidak lucu translates as seriously not funny.
The apparent impossibility of such a scene is what makes Masriadi's inventiveness as a painter even more apparent. Some of his most powerful works produced have in fact been critiques of gallerists and fellow artists, delivered as visual parables. For the painter, the difference between a friend and a foe is invariably clear. He adopts the vantage point of a slight outsider to the Indonesian artworld, observing patterns and instances of power relations between different players such as gallerists, artists and collectors. If taken as a visual allegory, Ga Lucu Banget (Really Not Funny) makes a veiled commentary on a particular type of relationship in the artworld - one that is non-reciprocal, in which the actions and antics of one is not appreciated by another.
Masriadi's human antagonist stands between danger and safety, bravery and trepidation. Flown across troubled skies, he is seemingly airlifted out of troubled straits but one bears the expectation that his fate is not going to be any better in the new unknown locale the black bird is going to take him. Revealed here is a wry attitude towards a certain human vulnerability borne out of a consciousness of the vicissitudes of life - who knows where life is taking us the next moment?