Eilish Kidd, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
As beautiful as etchings are, they have only recently been taken seriously in Indonesia.
Disturbed by a lack of opportunities to see the fine art of Jakartan printmakers, curator Jim Supangkat and Art Sociates director Ibu Andonwati were determined to mount an exhibition of prints at South Jakarta's Ark Gallery, displaying their richness and power to challenge oils and watercolors.
What unfolded was an exhibition showcasing four print artists: Tisna Sanjaya, Christine Ay Tjoe, Nicolas de Jesus and Jochen Kohn.
Both Tisna and Christine graduated from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB)'s School of Art and Design, majoring in printmaking. Christine's name may ring a bell for her paintings and installations, and for her pulling power with buyers and collectors.
Tisna is a popular lecturer at the ITB and a natural-born performance artist.
The other two participants, de Jesus and Kohn, live in the United States and Germany, respectively, though de Jesus is an ethnic Mexican.
Andonowati, who represents the artists in the exhibit, said Monday at the "International Print Talk: From the Dark Background of Etchings" forum that de Jesus and Kohn initially didn't take her seriously when she invited them to exhibit in Jakarta.
"Kohn said to me, 'will five prints be enough?'. I think he thought I was pulling his leg."
Kohn delineates the heart shapes of plants -- fronds, ferns, dandelion leaves, tiny flowers -- in his etchings and aquatints.
Clumps of shrubbery and dry grass -- dense and mysterious, and revealing the peak of Kohn's draftsmanship and the fine line detail characteristic of the medium -- are encircled by graffiti. These scratches, or personal symbols -- a coiled snake, toothpaste squeezed onto a brush, cherries, a slingshot -- make sense of the tangled nests within.
In the catalog essay, Kohn speaks of facing the metallic printing plate, slathered with ink, as like facing a dark secretive world.
"The dark plane makes it virtually impossible for me to see anything".
Tisna produces his etchings and aquatints with the spontaneity of drawing. Hand and footprints demarcate the boundaries of his compositions, bursting with zany faces and loopy scrawl, in a rough-and-tumble expressionism.
His painting-size prints, titled Gariah Jiwa (Passionate Soul), show bodies stretched out, as though on a rack, in a woodsy setting. Parts of the bodies are concealed with hands.
"When you encounter rough spots in life, you feel sympathy rather than a desire to be revolutionary," Tisna said at the artists' talk Monday afternoon. In another work, Matahari di Atas Asia, the sun over Asia is a coppery yin and yang. Dressed in a John Lennon "Imagine" T-shirt and jeans, Tisna talked long and hard about Islam, Christianity and the spirituality of the art-making process at Ark, arguing that the printmaker was a humble (misinterpreted) soul among artists.
Bringing forth the remaining ash of his pictures, apparently burned by the police last year, he requested that de Jesus plant his hands on a gluey/plastery canvas.
He then poured the ashes over the obliging de Jesus' hands, which were then lifted to reveal the white impression on the canvas. A work of art had been made and de Jesus spent the rest of the talk grimy from hand to wrist -- like a miner who had stumbled into the white world of Ark.
De Jesus' etchings showcase the velvety embossed quality of etchings and aquatints, suggesting it is inappropriate perhaps to think of the two as separate processes.
He was exposed to printmaking at an early age, and his technical skills pay testimony to this.
Color, the earthiness of clay and rust and gold, is important to de Jesus' prints. They are gorgeous to look at. In what was traditionally a black and white medium, de Jesus brings fresh effects to printmaking.
Christine's photo etchings of scrappy little dolls -- seemingly turned inside out, their unraveled padding showing -- have snap and sparkle, though they lack the fiery luster of de Jesus' works.
But is seems churlish to complain about a show of such quality. "From the Dark Background of Etchings" rescues printmaking from dusty archives and puts Ark firmly on the map of serious art. With only three days to go, this is not a show to miss.
"From the Dark Background of Etchings" until Feb. 20
Ark Gallery
Jl. Senopati Raya No. 92. (Also home to Bakoel Koffie)
Phone: (021) 7254934
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