Entang Wiharso

May 18 - 25, 2000

[Art Reviews]

He melts with you

Entang Wiharso plumbs the tension between old and new

by Ian Donnis
MELTING SOULS. New paintings by Entang Wiharso. At Gallery Agniel, 460 Wickenden Street, Providence, through May 27.

The paintings that compose Melting Souls were informally arrayed around Galley Agniel when I happened by one day and was transfixed by what I saw. Some of the works are vibrant, arresting and convey unmistakably strong emotions, yet remain ambiguous even while inviting a sustained examination. Others are easier to discern and simpler in what they depict, but no less compelling.
Melting Souls suggests the theme of the show. It speaks to the tension between a slower past and a technology-dependent present that grows inexorably faster and more commercial, threatening to swallow the intimacy of human connections. As a 32-year-old native of a small Indonesian village who moved to Smithfield a few years ago, Entang Wiharso is more sensitively attuned to this conflict than many of us.
The pure physicality of the 13 semi-representational paintings in this show, five of which are longer than six feet, enhance their impact, inviting the viewer to come close to examine Wiharso's meticulously hyper-detailed style (which variously incorporates Pollack-like drippings, applied materials, contrasting textures, thick applications of paint, and scratching to reveal sub-layers of color) and then pull back. A readily accessible point of entry is "Praying," which portrays two upside-down brown legs against a striated yellow background, powerfully suggesting loss and death, as four spirits, one with a cavity for a head, mournfully pray at the bottom. Wiharso says the painting was inspired in part by the massacre last year at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
Spirits and related images -- the stomach as a prime source of feeling -- frequently reoccur in the paintings. Positioned to the right of "Praying," "White Legs, Placenta Series," depicts a white body from the belly down to the feet, joined by a speckled gray-white background and a nested patch of red. The effect is simultaneously mysterious and soothing. "Prayer for Falling Flower" features red legs and, for Wiharso, an unusually realistic rendering of a flower in motion.
By contrast, other paintings in the show incorporate a cacophony of images. "Remote Control," a large three-panel triptych comments on the difficulty of retaining tranquillity and individuality in a cyber-world. The intense and visceral work, with bright patches of red and yellow that slightly suggest the tone of a comic book, is framed by two winking, remote control-wielding business types, sporting garishly disfigured smile, whose pants dissolve into a kaleidoscope of circus colors. Upon closer inspection, a small figure can be seen trying to escape the buzz by curling up, and a photo of Wiharso, screaming at the oppressiveness, is slyly tucked at the bottom of the center panel. Nearby, "After Phone Call," one of three smaller paintings of semi-realistic hearts, references another way in which technology can intrude on our lives, in this case the ringing of a cell phone during a prayer service in a temple.
Some of Wiharso's paintings are dark and grim, both in palette and content. The focal point of "Portrait on Saturday Night," is a screaming, melting head, set against a swirling dream-like background of black, yellow and green. The head and legs of an angel are smeared, indicating that even spirits are susceptible to dissipation in this world. "Prayer for Desire -- Burning Desire," seems like an ironic comment on concepts of beauty. A representational tan figure with oversized eyes and flaming hair stands near a bathroom scale, apparently trying to achieve the right weight, but evincing less regard for personality and spiritual well-being. In "Unforgotten Your Placenta," a remarkably vivid hallucinatory vision in red, a flock of spirits float and meander as two infant characters nurse on the breasts of a person whose gender otherwise appears masculine. There's a lot of movement and detail, but the message remains vague.
While his paintings typically flow from a specific idea, "You can see anything in my art," Wiharso says. The remark is apt in reference to much of the show. On the surface, the stormy content of many of his paintings represent a stark contrast to Wiharso, a gentle, physically slight man whose given name means "be happy." One of nine children born to poor farmers whose greatest material wealth resided in five water buffaloes, Wiharso developed his interest in art after being exposed to traditional Indonesian forms of puppetry and dance while growing up in Tegal, a village in northern Java. Wiharso personal style evolved after he attended the Art Institute of Indonesia in Yogyakarta, and a 1996 show at the National Galley in Jakarta that established him as one of the leading artists in his country. In 1995, he met Christine Cocco, an American Fulbright Scholar who was studying traditional Indonesian art groups, and the couple married in 1997.
Wiharso bridges different worlds in different ways: as an Indonesian who has witnessed the effects of urbanization and technology in his homeland; as an artist in the truth-telling tradition who adopted a symbolic language to avoid sanction under the old regime; and as a person who discovered that the political freedom of America is commingled with social ills like racism and seething consumerism. Coming of age while listening to the conflicts of power of Javanese myths, Wiharso includes Bart Simpson and Superman stand-ins as combatants in some of his older works, and his more recent ones remain laden with mattresses, triangles, tea cups and other symbols.
As Wiharso has written, "I am not in the habit of rejecting old traditions in favor of new ones. I do not shatter old traditions, nor do I substitute the avant-garde practices of a new culture for the old, I accept and acknowledge that I live in a world that has seen and valued both. As a result, I embrace an ideology of dualism that is between shape and abstraction. My art is between dreams and existence, between illusion and the tangible, between confusion and order, between that which is clear and that which is hidden."
Hard to believe, considering the amount of detail that goes into the paintings, but Wiharso commonly completes even some of his large ones in under 48 hours. The works, which are arranged intelligently and look terrific in the intimate scale of Galley Agniel, a storefront gallery in Fox Point, represent, as gallery owner Sara Agniel observes, the confident work of a fully arrived artist.
Ian Donnis can be reached at eidonnis[a]phx.com.