We Control the Future

A NEW POST-1975 GENERATIONAL AESTHETICS


Emerging onto the Indonesian art scene in the past few years has been a generation of artists, born after 1975, whose art practices have been distinctly influenced by the proliferation of an online culture, which has brought the world closer together, and pictorial references more available, for these artists during a formative time in their careers. Unlike preceding generations of artists, the post-1975 Yogyakarta-based artists - amongst them Indieguerillas, Eko Nugroho, Wedhar Riyadi, Uji 'Hahan' Handoko, Nano Warsono, Oky Rey Montha, Lugas Syllabus - have been much more exposed to the power of the mass media and consumer culture and their works routinely deal with these aspects of society.

In terms of influences, aspects of traditional culture is reflected in the works of the post-1975 artists. The artists keep on asking themselves about their identities: what it means to be "Indonesian", what it means to live in the 21st century. Dealing with these issues in an open-ended playful way, they combine what they understand of traditional culture, revising and re-visioning them for a contemporary audience.

Wedhar Riyadi draws heavily on underground comics, and his work is influenced by the anti-establishment aesthetic of Indonesian street culture. His take on Indonesian history informs the breadth of his artistic output - drawings, murals, comics, stickers, posters, illustrations, and even limited edition toys and clothing. The violence inherent in Holy War I (Lot 371) is confined to the cartoon world, a pastiche and commentary onto real-world violence.

In Different World Different Way (Lot 372), Uji 'Hahan' Handoko offers a raucously critical take on the international art market from the perspective of an emerging Indonesian artist fighting to make his mark. His protagonist chews on the quinessential artworld volume, Art Now, signaling the ongoing conflict between critical success and commercial gain. In an artist's interview, Hahan revealed that: "It's like recounting some of my experience in my country or maybe in another country where young artists do not have a strong position in the mechanisms of the commercial art world. Some of them (young artists) are just like oil in a commercial art world machine, if the oil is not good, it will be thrown away and the machine will be searching for new oil again for make the machine work better. I observe that and I want to share the experience to the audience. It's like pulling the trigger on people to think about that and make their personal opinion about that.

Nano Warsono's Dasamucka #1 (Lot 373) is a contemporary intepretation of a mythological ten-faced creature within the compositional style of a comic or zine. Adept at appropriating recognisable icons from Disney characters, Marvel Comics, Western fairy tales, brand icons, to religious figures and weaving them into his own particular blend comic-influenced narrative, Nano Warsono's works are some of the most refreshing and original portrait assemblages in contemporary Indonesian art.

Oky Rey Montha's alter ego, Kyre, is the protagonist in Personal Thinking #3 (Lot 374), a character whose independence and inclination to best out his own path reflects the artist's own pioneerin role in leading the kind of pop-surrealism art in Indonesia, drawn from the availability of mass media and comics.

When he was growing up, he got acquainted with 'punk', then immersing himself in the music scene, as a drummer. From early on, he started to record his thoughts and onset atoms in picture diaries. In these diaries, he noted down all his anxieties in the form of pictures.Through his works in drawings, paintings, digital works, and three-dimensional pieces, Oky Rey Montha is able to present various stories of his hard life's journey-an everlasting source of ideas and inspiration. Expressions stemming from personal experiences lend a chaotic notion to his works. Some of the most expressive imageries in his works are full of parody demonstrate a critique against authority, rules, convention, injustice, establishment, and domination.

Lugas Syllabus is the youngest artist amongst the present crop of post-1975 artists, but his works deal competently with the ironies and contradictions of contemporary society and the dualities that exist in the psychological realm of ordinary individuals are distilled and re-articulated in a pulsating and refreshing visual language. The pictorial world in Lugas' paintings may seem all illusion but they can be recognised by discriminating viewers as allegory. As allegories, they are vessels of deeper truths. We Control The Future (Lot 375) sees a plethora of superheroes and cartoon characters exist in an immortal outerspace, where they will not disappear but continue to exist beyond the present generation, attesting to the pervasive presence of our mediascape that etches images and narratives in our minds.