R E A C H
Sin Sin Fine Art @ Art Basel in Hong Kong  |  23 May - 23 June 2013

Crossing Boundaries
by Ian Findlay-Brown

Bringing together a disparate group of artists from different cultural and aesthetic backgrounds to form a cohesive group exhibition is no easy task. It is challenging not only because the artists work in a wide variety of media, it is also difficult because the content and context of their art practice might expose problems of identity and style that do not fit comfortably into a group setting. Such, however, is not the case with the work that makes up dynamic exhibition entitled REACH, a show that bridges eight distinct art practices from Indonesia, Hong Kong, France, Germany, and the United States. The carefully selected works cover, as the organizer Sin Sin Fine Art notes, “a blending of cultural and national identities [where] one can perceive a kind of internalized cross-cultural dialogue.”

The eight artists speak each with their own unique voice. Their collective voice, however, reveals an abundance of visual experience across cultural boundaries that are only breached by a willingness to come together as equals in creativity and perception. Although one might perceive certain aesthetic uncertainties in some works, each work articulates a singular narrative that represents distinctive human and cultural experience that transcends national boundaries. This is clear in the tantalizing variety of artworks brought together here: calligraphy and landscape, figuration and abstraction realized through a wide range of media including oil, Chinese ink, acrylic, crayon, and graphite as well as marble powder and Chinese lacquer.

With such a variety of media and imagery the artists ask numerous questions that examine both broad cultural and deeply personal experience. There are important questions of time and place expressed beautifully in the works of American Rick Lewis (b.1965), Indonesian M. Irfan (b.1972), Frenchman Vincent Cazeneuve (b.1977), and Indonesian Andy Dewantoro (b.1973) that require careful study. Not everything is readily answered. There are also questions posed around the importance of figuration in cultural and artistic history and personal life as in the works of Indonesians Putu Sutawijaya (b.1971) and S. Teddy Darmawan (b.1970). There are questions about writing and abstraction, the role of calligraphy and its subtle visual power, by Hong Kong artist Fung Ming Chip (b.1951) and then there is fluid wandering line that writes images rather than draws as in the work of German Tilo Kaiser (b.1965). It is important that we not only see, or are at least aware of, these artists’ questions and philosophical musings as again not all questions have ready answers.

Not all art is immediately accessible to the eye and the mind for the best art requires that one open up their emotions and imagination to all the potential of revelation and observation beyond the mundane, beyond the quotidian experiences that rule society generally. Such is the case in the abstract landscapes by Rick Lewis, an artist who has fixed his memories at the heart of his art. His paintings are beautifully layered abstract expressions that have a wonderful contemplative quality about them, a fine example of which is Spanish Holiday (2012). Lewis’s roughly textured vision is not an easily accessible experience for any viewer. Although there is often a great stillness on the surface of his paintings, one is always made aware that behind the calmness lies a violence that only nature can summon and it is the kind of unexpected natural power for which one should be prepared.

The art of Vincent Cazeneuve possesses unique geometry in its construction: it is rooted not so much in personal memory but in his intellectual and artistic experience of Chinese culture and landscape. Cazeneuve, whose Chinese name is Qi Wensen, has had a long experience of working with Chinese lacquer both as a craft medium and as an art medium. Although lacquer is at the heart of his Untitled (2013) landscape art series, Cazeneuve utilizes a wide variety of other media that add greatly to the texture and the aesthetic of his oeuvre. His vision is also not limited by to a single culture and education but one that is informed by both the traditions and craft of the artisan and the experimental nature and aesthetic of an artist.

The visual and artistic discipline in the art of Lewis and Cazeneuve is also to be seen in the works of Fung Ming Chip and Tilo Kaiser, artists whose traditions and influences are centuries and worlds apart yet address the challenges of linear experimentation and drawing. Through their art practices both artists seek fresh ways of drawing and geometry that liberate the constraints of traditional and conservative thinking on ink painting. They seek the freedom that allows for fresh, strong art that speak generations. Fung’s calligraphic art challenges a proud written tradition that bridges the unique visual forms, geometry, and beauty of the Chinese characters as they have developed from ancient ideograms and the craft of seal carving. Fung has worked in an innovative variety of new scripts over his long career as a self-taught artist that reveal not only his intriguing conceptual expressiveness of his culture but also how they fit effortlessly into his ideas on contemporary culture’s willingness to embrace tradition. This is evident in scrolls such as Altered Consciousness of Sakura, Zone Script (Negative) and Altered Consciousness of Sakura, Zone Script (Positive) in which shadowy figures emerge gradually to the viewer from within his textual abstraction.

Fung Ming Chip’s characters cavort upon the paper (I have always admired how he suggests both music and dance in his poetic scrolls.) The lyrical quality of Fung’s art may perhaps be constrained by the calligraphic forms in which he works, but the free lyricism of Tilo Kaiser’s line, as in Champagne and Chocolate Icecream (2013), is that of an artist who clearly loves to draw. Kaiser’s fluid line draws out a curious narrative, almost a cartoonish one, of both object and figure that delights the eye. Here is a magical flower and pot, and there, a tiny gesturing figure and a strange cutting instrument. Kaiser’s line enhances the puckish humor (and pictorial and emotional tensions) that one sees in his works here, which are more drawing that painting. At the same, Kaiser brings together significant and disparate elements of many contemporary avant-garde art forms and ideas as distinct as abstract expressionism, comic art, and graffiti. Kaiser has woven his poetic mix of such inspirations (rather than influences) into highly engaging art that is much his own.

The abstractions of Fung Ming Chip and Tilo Kaiser are far from the elegant figuration of Putu Sutawijaya and S. Teddy Darmawan. Yet while this is the case, all the artists address the place of culture and tradition in everyday society. At the same time, differences in art practice highlight the need for artists to look beyond their visual comfort zones for inspiration and change.

For Putu Sutawijaya change in his figurative focus has yielded interesting results as his abstract figures have given way to beautifully realized Chinese opera characters. These are not direct portrayals of traditional opera characters on the stage but are “inspired by traditional Potehi puppets in Java. The origins of these puppets in Indonesia can be traced back to Chinese immigrants who came to trade a settle between the 16th and 19th centuries.” For Sutawijaya these dolls represent “a new kind of consciousness [through which] to re-examine life.” Sutawijaya’s figures have an intense sense of movement emphasized both through their hand gestures and bulkiness of the costumes. An excellent example of Sutawijaya’s new expression is his Warrior #5 (2013), which is made more resplendent through the artist’s attention to the details of the costume and the facial expression. S. Teddy Darmawan’s art has an entirely different energy to them. It is the grand energy that has found expression in astonishing range in everything from “paintings, drawings, installations, and sculptures to performance art.” And it is the energy that is only realized through the force of Chinese ink, which affords the artist the powerful, dark strokes of energy. S. Teddy Darmawan has “long been fascinated with the spontaneity and irrevocability of painting with Chinese ink-and- brush on paper.” This is clear in such works as Love Story # 1 and #2 (both 2012), which are both elegant statements on the lightness and darkness of love.

While collectively all the artists in REACH make a unique statement on their time and used understated comment on place and of different cultures overlapping, the individual voices remain strong. And while there is lightness in some of the works, there is also darkness in a number of pieces that reflects something of the angst of the world today that is uncomfortable. The calligraphy of Fung Ming Chip and the landscapes of Rick Lewis as well as those of Vincent Cazeneuve possess something disturbing behind their surfaces. This is suggested more by the tone of their colors and the tension of their line.

The art of Andy Dewantoro and M. Irfan is full of an uncanny, even threatening darkness that envelopes the emotions like a sinister cloud. Yet darkness also frees the soul and lifts the spirits. There is a visceral feel to Dewantoro’s and Irfan’s art, something that is missing in so much contemporary art, which often seems to be made more to satisfy a market than to inform an intellect or ease the spirit.

Crossing boundaries and reaching into other cultures and artistic traditions to make a new vision is what has fed the work of all the artists in REACH. Dewantoro’s art has been especially influenced by the spirit of the 19th-century masters of European landscape painting as well as the grammar of the cinema. This is clear in such works as Silenced by the Night #1 and #2 (both 2013) and When the Lights Go Out (2013). Dewantoro understands completely the power of the shadow to give a painting a special tone, to encourage psychological disquiet, and to suggest spiritual abandonment.

This is also, to some extent, true of the art of M. Irfan. His paintings of bridges and roads project the monumentality that surrounds us in life. Such structures threaten the equanimity of individuals as they go about their daily lives. Where Dewantoro achieves power through a dark, shadowy world, Irfan achieves it through his attention to detail. Irfan is an astute observer of his place and its harsh physical realities. He is clearly fascinated by technology, the precision of engineering, the minutiae of calculations, and the dramatic geometry of his subjects. It is through such attention to the reality of his subjects as in Gerbang (Gate) and Jembatan (Bridge) (both 2013) that Irfan speaks to the alienation in the face of the monumentality of roads, bridges, and skyscrapers that crowd our cityscapes and emphasize just how little control we have over the physical world around us.

Not all runs smoothly here as a coherent whole, which is as it should be since life and culture are forever at odds with each other and changing. But when artworks click together there are some beautiful and serendipitous surprises that speak directly to the worthwhile challenge of crossing boundaries.

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Ian Findlay-Brown is the editor/publisher of Asian Art News and World Sculpture News.