.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Chicken Dance (Lot 119) is an irrepressibly engaging painting from the artist's first US solo exhibition in 2011. In a style that is increasingly associated with Masriadi, a muscular black man gains anthropomorphic proportions, bearing a rooster's head, and confronting the viewer who is all too familiar with the rooster's most distinct trait - the morning crow. The painter underlines this reference with the text, Morning Call, which denotes various forms of disturbances and is mainly unsolicited. The rooster-man in Chicken Dance is the vanguard of mischief, the one who heralds unwelcome news and who literally upsets the peace.
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.
To get a deeper appreciation of Masriadi's penchant for creating iconoclastic figures like the rooster-man in the present lot, one has to appreciate the painter's perception of never being really accepted by mainstream society, due in part to being an artist and in part to his withdrawn personality. Instead, he seeks solace in online gaming, which opens a new vista of reality for him. From this, he returns to view society around him with a satirical attitude. The superhuman figures he paints embody narratives that are rooted in Indonesian cultural history but also offer witty and often biting social commentary on contemporary life and global pop culture.
His skilled mastery of light, shadow and volume allows the larger-than-life sized characters in his paintings to gain sculptural, almost three-dimensional presence. Sometimes these characters appear in the archetypal roles of comic book heroes, cowboys, soldiers and athletes, but just as frequently, they are just powerfully built men and women.
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.
To get a deeper appreciation of Masriadi's penchant for creating iconoclastic figures like the rooster-man in the present lot, one has to appreciate the painter's perception of never being really accepted by mainstream society, due in part to being an artist and in part to his withdrawn personality. Instead, he seeks solace in online gaming, which opens a new vista of reality for him. From this, he returns to view society around him with a satirical attitude. The superhuman figures he paints embody narratives that are rooted in Indonesian cultural history but also offer witty and often biting social commentary on contemporary life and global pop culture.
His skilled mastery of light, shadow and volume allows the larger-than-life sized characters in his paintings to gain sculptural, almost three-dimensional presence. Sometimes these characters appear in the archetypal roles of comic book heroes, cowboys, soldiers and athletes, but just as frequently, they are just powerfully built men and women.