SongEun Art Space “Tom Tandio: The Man Who Fell into Art: Collecting as a Form of Personal Narrative”

Seoul, October 13 – December 10, 2016, http://www.songeunartspace.org

Artists: Wisnu Auri, Wimo Ambala Bayang, Duto Hardono, Jompet Kuswidananto, Aditya Novali, Eko Nugroho, Albert Yonathan Setyawan, Melati Suryodarmo, Tromarama, curator: Alia Swastika

The exhibition provided a view of Indonesian art through the collection of Tom Tandio. The installation felt smooth, but it was not very surprising. I admit I do not know too much about Indonesian art and I only have a certain stereotype in my head. The expectations shaped by the stereotype where satisfied in the show: Some Javanese theatre inspired kinetic sculpture from everyday materials, traditional woodcut inspired paintings, references to everyday folk culture and primitivism, etc.

The biggest outlier was Wisnu Auri and his paintings. He was one of the younger artists in the show. His work stood out to me because on one hand there was a loose relationship to the graphical qualities of the woodcut tradition, yet at the same time, the paintings appeared as some freehand scribbles, giving it a Cy Twombly-like quality. The work stepped out of the stereotypical expectation of what Indonesian art should look like and it could well be something shown amongst contemporary Korean painters e.g. those in last year’s Ilmin Museum (Crossing Plane: Unit, Layer, Nostalgia) or this year’s Hite Collection (Twin Peaks) shows.