Cempaka Culture and Tourism: Indonesian Artist Jerry Thung Wants to Talk About Sex

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Friday, December 4, 2009

Indonesian Artist Jerry Thung Wants to Talk About Sex

The Jakarta Globe, Armando Siahaan

Artist borrowed from ancient Eastern erotica, as well as used the condom as a symbol of contemporary views on sex. (Photo: Safir Makki, JG)

Sex is at the heart of life — this is the theme that runs through Bogor-born artist Jerry Thung’s current exhibition at the National Gallery in Central Jakarta.

Titled “Eastern Wisdom: The Art of Love,” the exhibition, which opened on Nov. 26, presents 18 acrylic paintings — each of which are several meters square in size — and three art installations.

Nearly all of the paintings are of large hands displaying scenes of intertwined couples.

Jerry has reconstructed the scenes from fragments, borrowing from the long tradition of erotic art in Eastern countries, such as in Japanese Shunga prints, Chinese pillow books (love-making manuals) and Tantric paintings.

He suggests ethnicity in details, such as a turban or dragon tattoo, applying rich, exotic colors with brazen abandon.

“The message I’m trying express is that we cannot treat sex thoughtlessly,” Jerry said.

“It is the beginning of life for humans, animals and plants. It is the core of life.”

Jerry, who graduated from the Jakarta Institute of the Arts in 1994, said he had chosen to reference ancient illustrations for a specific reason.

“Even thousands of years ago, our ancestors knew sex was sacred,” Jerry said. “It was studied in a sophisticated manner because they knew that it was the core of life.

“Sexual intercourse is not something taboo. The art of copulation is something to be learned, to be transcribed, and to be inherited from one generation to another.”

He explained that the hands in his paintings represent mudra, a spiritual or ritual gesture of energy-seeking that derives from Buddhism and Hinduism.

The artist said: “I combine mudra with the coupling images to strengthen the spiritual messages, as mudra is part of Tantric Buddhism.”

Jerry has also repeated the image of a condom on a finger in his canvasses.

“The condom is a symbol of profane sex, a symbol of the modern world,” said the 47-year-old painter.

“I collided these two images of the ancient and the modern so that viewers realize that in this world, there are two kinds of intercourse: spiritual and physical.”

The installations in “Eastern Wisdom” explore sex metaphorically.

“Holopis Kondom Baris” (“Holopis Line of Condoms”) consists of dozens of colorful condoms in the shape of a fan, while “Ngeyeus Seureuh” (“Sirih Leaf Arrangement”) comprises a wooden rice pestle moving slowly in and out of a pounding bowl — a metaphor for a Sundanese wedding ritual. The exhibition was curated by Australian Robert Finlayson.

He said Jerry dealt with sex as a sacred act, specifically centralizing on the practice of Tantra.

“Tantra is a wide and deep system of beliefs that uses ritual and focused actions — including yoga, visualizations or meditation, and verbalizations or mantra — to purify the practitioner of past negative karma and achieve the ultimate goal of union with the absolute,” Finlayson said.

He added that aside from the sexually charged theme, the exhibition’s power lay in Jerry’s artistic ability.

Finlayson said that Jerry’s works are a unique blend of traditional and modern imagery, rendered with a sensitivity that results from an established artist moving into his mature period.

He also said Jerry’s artistic practice also reflected his interest in the wider cultural influences on Indonesian art and culture. According to Finlayson, thematically, there has never been anything like this series of paintings in the history of Indonesian art.

The tradition of the nude exists honorably in modern Indonesian art and some artists in Bali have depicted coupling gods, he said, “but no one has ever produced such a considered body of work on the theme of Tantric sexual yoga referencing some of its artistic manifestations.”

As such, Finlayson said that the exhibition is pioneering “not only in introducing to Indonesia something of a lost aspect of Hindu and Buddhist culture that is a legacy of the nation’s past, but also in offering to the art world a whole new area for explorations and expression.”

Eastern Wisdom: The Art of Love
A Solo Exhibition by Jerry Thung
Galeri Nasional, Gedung C
Jl. Medan Merdeka Timur No. 14, Central Jakarta
Nov. 26-Dec. 10
10 a.m.-7 p.m.