Urban Reflection

Urban Reflection on Reality tried to identify two main problems faced by artists, as Indah Arsyad.

Firstly, on artists as a part of the fine-arts social field structural discourse, and secondly, on artists as a part of the urban society members; especially those residing in Jakarta.

In the exhibition the Jakartan artists view the artistic and urban aspects. According to Rikrik Kusmara, the 3-dimensional works mark the awareness of physical existence that is factual; in a space, concrete, and upclose manner. “The works in this exhibition is the form of honest affirmation, concrete existence of thoughts, and the expression of artists in an environment,” said Rikrik.

In a city like Jakarta, the highway –as one of the form of “space”- become the media of factual take-over and battles between the power of capitalism and human symbolizes by motorbikes, private vehicles, public transports, trucks, and other vehicles.

Wheels of vehicles chasing one another jamming the roads of Jakarta were nicely visualized by Indah Arsyad in ‘Racing Minds’. Geese feathered wheels seem to fly over all sorts of traffic jams. The sculpture indicated the worsen transportation problem in the big city such as Jakarta; that even the wheels imagine to be able to fly like a bird, when in fact, the actual birds that live in the big cities are nothing but a memory because the forest and trees as their habitat has turned into concrete ‘jungle’ and skyscrapers.

Another problem that Jakarta face is the number of population that continues to escalate with no way of pressing it down. This gives way to more crimes, the emergence of street vendors that take-over pedestrians way, the overflowing beggars, and crammed slums by the riverbanks and under the bridges.

Geoffrey Tjakra in the work ‘Over Population’ in form of head-cuts in various textures made from ceramic jammed in some kind of glass capsule represents the jammed and crammed Jakarta. Iwan P Simatupang in ‘Elpigi’, sculpture of a gas tube made of imitated leather formed to duplicate a real gas tube explained nicely that art as a part of the contemporary social system is divided into categories. In this work he showed the interpretation and perception on danger as the mixture of humor and irony. It is called humor because in reality every urban has actually “planted the potential” of danger in their own kitchens, and the irony is that in our era now, we cannot be departed from the gas tube.