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Curatorial Statement | Artwork Images | Documentation | Essay | Artist’s Biography
Gapura Buwana
Gegerboyo‘s Solo Exhibition
Curator :
Manshur Zikri
April 9th – May 7th 2021
Cemeti – Institute for Art and Society
Teks Pengantar
Gapura Buwana exhibits Gegerboyo’s visual artworks, most of which are drawn on the walls of the gallery. The rest of them are printed and drawn on transparent fabrics that are hung in different positions at a certain distance from the wall. In order to encourage new interpretations of Gegerboyo’s artistic practice, this exhibition highlights their method, which, according to them, is carried out in a “non-systemic” way. This refers to organically drawing, unrestrained by any rigid criterion in terms of visual composition or narrative systems.
Gapura Buwana is a formal development of Gegerboyo’s previous works. The idea stemmed from their interpretation of a gate (‘gapura’): a main entrance that both limits and connects two different zones. It is a common thread that connects the focus of its each member. As individual artists, each member dissects a range of issues such as power, historical sites, local myths, daily routine, women and domestication by exploring potential forms and techniques that represent the concept of “intermediary”.
Emphasizing the act of responding to each member’s drawings, Gegerboyo interprets an approach inspired by tonil, a traditional grassroot theatre (which relies heavily on narrative improvisation outside the script), but their visual reveals an anti-narrative experiment: a creation of a narrative landscape that refuses a chronological plot, breaking the sequential limits of the pictures, and allowing an articulation in which various visual fragments interrupt each other; evoking a wilder interpretation in the minds of the spectator. However, Gapura Buwana is constructed as a trace of praxis that belongs to Gegerboyo’s attempt to criticize the social behavior of society through a combination of visual idioms from Javenese culture and actual situation of contemporary urban. Yet, it is as if their experiment of combining images on the wall and on the transparent fabrics invites us to enjoy their work through transforming our modes of perception from merely looking at the images on a flat surface to experiencing them in volumes and spatial layers.
Manshur Zikri
Curator
Opening
Friday, April 9th 2021 | 6:30 – 8 pm
*Limited to 35 person (registration via Whatsapp)
Daily Visit
April 10th – May 7th 2021
Tuesday – Saturday | 11 am – 4:30 pm
4 sessions per day (except April 16th, 20th and 22nd 2021 only 2 sessions)
*Closed on May 1st, 2021.
*Limited to 8 person per session via registration.
Sharing Session
*Limited to 5 person per session via registration
*Registration for sharing session will open Tuesday, April 13, 2021.
Sharing Session 01 – Artist Talk: Gegerboyo
April 16th, 2021, 3 – 5 pm
– Speakers: Vendy Methodos, Enka Komariah, Dian Suci Rahmawati, Ipeh Nur, and Prihatmoko Moki.
– Moderator: Agnesia Linda Mayasari (Director of Cemeti).
Sharing Session 02 – “Possibilities of the Contextualization of Image”
April 20th, 2021, 3 – 5 pm
– Speakers: Agung Kurniawan (artist), Fajar Wijanarko (archivist dan curator; Museum Sonobudoyo), and Taufiq Nur Rachman (writer and researcher).
– Moderator: Gunawan Maryanto (litterateur; Teater Garasi).
Sharing Session 03 – “Expanded Image: Reading the Social Value of Images”
April 22nd, 2021, 3 – 5 pm
– Speaker: Samuel Indratma (artist), Syafiatudina (curator; KUNCI Study Forum & Collective), and Ladija Triana D. (curator; Kantin Kurasi)
– Moderator: Manshur Zikri (Curator of Cemeti).
Foto Karya Gapura Buwana
Artwork Images
Dokumentasi Gapura Buwana
Working Process Documentation
Opening Documentation
Photo and Video documentation of opening Gegerboyo’s Solo Exhibition “Gapura Buwana”, April 7th, 2021, Cemeti – Institute for Art and Society. (Photo: Muhammad Dzulqornain)
Esai Pameran
Essay
Gazing into Gapura Buwana: An Artistic Reflection on Gegerboyo’s Formal Experiment
The “non-systemic” drawing workflow that has been implemented by Gegerboyo is, in fact, an attempt to go beyond the boundaries of the consecutive system. As we can see in this exhibition, titled Gapura Buwana, the visual tsunami on Gegerboyo’s walls is fragmental instead of sequential—the fragments of the images interrupt one another, resulting in a visual solidity.
Where are Gegerboyo’s Visual Sketches?
In that context, we can no longer limit sketches to manual, hand-drawn scribbles on a piece of paper. In reality, images from the (digital) media have taken a role as “medium of sketches”. The presence of sketches, for Gegerboyo, has transformed into a far larger vehicle than the limited scope of a manual scribble on a paper.
Where is Gegerboyo’s Visual Production?
We can say that the “physical memory” of the “production process” is being emphasized, and it becomes Gegerboyo’s purpose beyond the textual meaning—as we usually expect will be—narrated in those drawings. In another word, Gegerboyo’s drawings do not “narrate something”, but rather they “situate us”.
Where is Gegerboyo’s Anti-Narrative?
In the context of Gegerboyo’s drawings, the process of fusion is the ‘sequential drawings’, and the anticipation of ‘illusion of the fusion process’ we have mentioned is therefore anticipation of ‘sequential illusion’. This is important, in order to see other potentials of Gegerboyo’s ‘anti-narrative’.
Biografi Seniman
Artist’s Biography
Gegerboyo is a Yogyakarta-based artist collective founded in June 2017, currently consisting of five visual artists: Vendy Methodos, Enka Komariah, Dian Suci Rahmawati, Ipeh Nur, and Prihatmoko Moki. With excellent drawing skills from each of the members, their works often criticize and reflect actual social and political phenomena by quoting elements of the people’s daily lives. Their experiments are not limited to narrative construction and figurative forms, but they also attempt to absorb traditional symbolic attributes to be rearticulated according to the attitude, behavior, or gestures of the people of the contemporary social kinship.
Gegerboyo’s expressions are inspired by Javanese culture and traditions, and contemporary urban space. Their exploration of visual language consists of deviantly composed representational elements hinting at identity politics and power relations, including the conflict between the traditional and the modern. They often compose supranatural figures in a ‘spectral’ setting or landscape in an unsettling arrangement. This is an interesting linguistic approach to respond to the social and political issues that became the narrative background of their drawings.
Gegerboyo has been involved in various national and international art projects, including Art Jakarta Virtual (2020, presented by a collaboration between Baik + Khneysser and Cemeti – Institute for Art and Society); Goro-goro Gegerboyo, in “Karya Normal Baru”, Biennale Jogja (2020); “International Mural By Mail”, Elisabeth Jones Art Center (2020); Biennale Jogja XV: “Do We Live in The Same Playground?” (2019); Tan Hana Dharma Mangrwa, REDBASE, Yogyakarta (2019); and Ngabuburit Mural Pancasila, Stadion Kridosono Kotabaru, Yogyakarta (2017).
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