Asmudjo Irianto's Unoriginal Sin II

#superduperdecorativeart

I'm not against beauty, it just sounds boring to me.

- Tibor Kalman

and so his art concealed his art.

- Ovidius Naso

Having a non-style is more slippery and surprising than sticking to one nice recognizable look.

- David Byrne

Plagiarize your plagiarizers.

Bootleg your bootleggers.

Pirate your pirates.

- Kenneth Goldsmith

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

- Kurt Vonnegut

artists are looking for love - Eric Fischl

Thou shalt make use of sex.

- Gilber and George

Anything less than paradox would be simplistic.

- Alan Kaprow

Bandung, 5-20 October 2014

Dear Mas,

Apa kabar?

I visited your exhibition Unoriginal Sin, Art in the Expired Field five times at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space earlier this year: during the opening, the artist talk and another three times after that first weekend.

The opening was crowded; it was even more packed than usual. I wonder if this was out of politeness, after all, you taught a great many of the visitors. Or were they, in general, generously curious about your latest works? Or did some wanted to witness seeing you going flat on your face?

The opening speeches by Pak Sunaryo and Pak Jim Supangkat were intriguing. Pak Sunaryo joked that you are a famously slow artist. And Pak Jim sounded rather annoyed and attacked you brutally for your urge to come out of the closet as an artist – your last solo exhibition, Kleptosigns, was way back in 2000. Pak Jim clearly preferred you to focus on your curatorial practice and he didn't understand why Selasar invited him to open your exhibition. So it opened with a bang, and you prepared more noise and disquiet.

Quite a few works on display at Selasar included sound elements, including dangdut, and with the crowd packed in the exhibition spaces this resulted in a cacophony of claustrophobic proportions. When I asked my friends to share their opinion about your exhibition, their responses varied from 'Wah, Asmudjo banget!' to 'hilarious!'.

No wall-text. No catalog. So we had to wait for the artist talk to get a better sense of all this noise. The noise made one thing loud and clear: the artist -

you - is present (again, that is).

Two days later I went again to Selasar, this time for your talk on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The talk wasn’t informative, to say the least. You were evasive. It seemed you didn't care.

But you do care, you’ve told me since, you want to be taken seriously as an artist. But how to take you seriously as an artist who employs contradictions, hyperboles, jokes, etc. both in your work as well as a persona and the ways you talk about your work?

Okay, all well, so I took you on your word, and proposed to Pak Hendro Wiyanto to exhibit Unoriginal Sin II at LAF. Perhaps in Yogya we can experience and discuss your work without the burden of your image as a public figure in Bandung's (smallish) art world (I'm sure you're familiar with some of the qualifications: from campus bully to joker, from art thief to… You can fill in the blanks yourself).

But, still, if we, members of ‘your audience’, have to take your work seriously, don't you think it would be a wise strategy to take us seriously in return? Now the talk at Selasar felt like you were dodging bullets that were never fired. And basically, you were ignored...

Anyway, after the opening & talk weekend I visited your exhibition three more times, I didn't trust my first impressions, so I returned again, again and once more (the last time was actually for Mochtar Apin’s exhibition, curated by Chabib Duta Hapsoro and Mas Enin Supriyanto, but I took a final look at your show).

I actually planned to review your Selasar show, but I aborted the mission halfway through. So, this letter addressed to you and the manifesto in your name are attempts in different forms. The manifesto is a series of statements,

this letter, on the other hand, written after the manifesto but to be read first, addresses you and your work in a series of questions.

What kind of artist do you want to be(-come)? What kind of person do you want to be(-come)?

If we check the IndoArtNow website (http://indoartnow.com/artists/asmudjojono-irianto), it seems you are a young and emerging artist, as an artist you were for long overshadowed by yourself as a curator.

At my first attempt to crack IVAA’s website, I only found your contribution to Syagini Ratna Wulan’s work Bibliotea. It took some more effort to find the 2000 catalog Kleptosigns (printed in a limited edition of 800 copies) on the website.

You often state that in contemporary art ‘anything goes’, but instead I propose ‘anything could become’. Both signify contingency, the former, though, seems to be too inclusive: not everything is already the case, not everything has already become art – or, in other words, art history isn’t a zombie entity yet.

The latter provides space for the chance of future encounters we do not/cannot yet imagine (the future new/now).

‘Anything goes’, you say, to which you add: but, of course, we need to make justifications explicit to validate what has become. This opens a floodgate of issues centering around the question where the justification should be primarily located: artwork, exhibition, artist, curator, audience, academia, art market, collector, gallerist, and etcetera. No single perspective can provide a satisfying approach to all of these issues. And not all perspectives can be combined into a unified approach (combination of art history, philosophy of art, art criticism, sociology of art, etcetera).

But without attempt we are left with the cynical sense that the emperor isn’t

wearing any clothes while we keep on pretending s/he does in fact wear haute couture. Writing about art isn’t an exact science, conjecture and speculation are rife, and contestation is thus to be expected and even needed.

This reminds me of a discussion I organized at Cemeti Art House earlier this year for Kristoffer Ardeña’s travelling project Dear Curator Curate Me (you met the artist the previous year when we organized this project at Selasar). At Cemeti, Alia Swastika claimed: 1. curatorial essays are generally ignored; and 2. contemporary art practices are multi-layered, many layers aren’t visible, and, therefore, a curatorial essay is needed to provide a context. Because of 1. she questions if we still need the text, but because of 2. it’s still written. But because of 1. the danger is that it’s written without the needed focus resulting in sloppy writing, which, in turn, makes 1. worse and 2. impossible.

If you don’t take us seriously, you might very well be ignored. Hence, it might not be possible to validate your work. After all, no justification can be executed in isolation. A discrete writing, person or artwork cannot provide validation.

Not only ‘anything goes’, but you also claim that contemporary art is beyond beauty yet aesthetical. It’s aesthetical because it necessarily needs to take one form or another, or, in other words, art is the embodiment of imagination, and, therefore, materialization still matters, even tough we no longer can believe in the myth of the intrinsic meaning of a thing.

Do you still have faith in art? Otherwise this is a futile exercise.

How to make sense of pixels and paint? If we deny these the inherent magic to have intrinsic meaning it would seem to lead to a form of formalism, wouldn’t you agree? Of course you won’t, as it would close off other possible avenues the ‘anything goes’ adagio could morph into.

You closed the door to beauty, which seems to contradict ‘anything goes’. I

guess it’s the romantic in me, but a sprinkle of poetic beauty doesn’t hurt.

Don’t you think the anti-‘mooi Indië’ discourse has made beauty a taboo in Bandung’s contemporary art scene?

Sure, beauty – whether in Kant’s metaphysical sense or in Dewey’s pragmatist sense – isn’t enough, otherwise a sunset seen from Dago Giri could be considered an artwork, which isn’t very helpful.

While meaning isn’t intrinsic, it would also be a mistake to locate it entirely extraneously – the autonomy of the exhibition can be a useful fiction; it’s the reflexive and antagonistic relationship that matters: Chabib’s essay (http://bit.ly/ZvYDN0), my text, the artist talks at Selasar and at LAF, reviews, interviews, informal discussions, gossips, etcetera, and the exhibitions at Selasar and LAF (you didn’t sell any of works from your Selasar exhibition, so for now I leave sales out of the equation). Instead of discrete artworks, I propose to consider the exhibition as a discursive unit to make sense of Unoriginal Sin I & II.

And it should be an ongoing relationship: the conversation keeps on flowing in all different directions, allowing for multiple readings. And you, the artist, continue to show your work so we can continue to engage with your work.

Don’t let us wait another decade for your next solo.

You mentioned to me once that Unoriginal Sin has the intention to criticize the paradox of the art world in Indonesia. First, capital is dominant (you called it a conspiracy), which means that validation is all too often coming from the market (but I think it’s a mistake to picture the market as a monolithic monster). And second, the ideal of a social contribution of art to the wider society is an illusion in Indonesia; after all, contemporary art in Indonesia is a sub-sub-sub culture, and, therefore, we aren’t allowed to be arrogant.

Vanity seems to be one of your attributes, one could claim, as your image is

omnipresent in your work. However, you don’t bother us with your touchy feelings in your work. Moreover, an image of you shouldn’t be confused with the ‘actual’ you.

Like the 2000 solo, you again use the technique of appropriation in your work – you insert your image into others’ works. Does appropriation still do the trick? Does it still have critical bite? If that was actually the case back in 2000, I didn’t see Kleptosigns, I first came to Indonesia in 2003.

It’s a cliché that painting has died. It’s a conversation stopper. But I’m not sure if appropriating Chuck Close’s style shows that painting is alive and kicking.

Perhaps that isn’t your intention, you are not a painter (you outsource most work out to young artists performing as artisans – when authenticity isn’t the goal, outsourcing isn’t problematic).

You don’t call yourself a ceramicist, you want be considered a contemporary artist. The adjective ‘contemporary’ is a tricky one though, who is and who isn’t considered contemporary can shift for arbitrary reasons.

But why didn’t you write and publish a book on your criticism of the art world in Indonesia? (Yes, I know, you asked a similar question to Pak FX Harsono during his artist talk at Selasar recently.) A world of which you aren’t an innocent bystander looking from the outside in on the seedy gore; you aren’t just a witness: you are a participant and influential broker. A book-length analysis of the (perceived) ills of the art world in Indonesia by an insider like you – a whistle-blower! – could be, I reckon, provocative reading material.

Alas, you opted for a different kind of noise: a horse on roller skates and dangdut!

Appropriating and re-contextualizing bits and pieces of everyday life isn’t exactly original, but incorporating dangdut into an installation certainly does the trick to trigger responses that puts us way off track. But there is more to

Unoriginal Sin than dangdut, so what about the exhibition as a discursive unit?

By the way, before I forget to ask, why are Unoriginal Sin I & II self-curated?

Is it by deliberate choice or out of necessity?

Okay, lets try to establish a mental map of Selasar as if it isn’t architecturally disrupted into different exhibition spaces so we could discuss your exhibition as a discursive unit. Could Unoriginal Sin I be seen as more than its parts of discrete art objects displayed in space and instead seen as connected and in dialogue with space to offer us an embodied experience?

As mentioned, I visited Unoriginal Sin I at Selasar five times. The first two visits my answer was outright ‘no!’ (perhaps also because it was just too crowded, but perhaps also for more petty reasons). But then, something, slowly, started to click.

Still, I must say, there were a couple of works that are boring and, for me, took the flow out of the exhibition: the already mentioned Chuck Close adaptation (Close to Close), the Art Now book appropriation (Doppelganger), and the series of photographic works based on magazines (After…). These works come across as commentaries, as quotative comments they remain too close to their source materials, and as footnotes they took up way too much space.

Other works in Unoriginal Sin I were bold, some were even tipping over the top, pulling us in and pushing us out: a vertigo-inducing rollercoaster. The focal points were the retrograding horse (Maju Terus, Pantang Mundur!) and the dangdut spitting face (Dark Father). At Selasar, these two works were in different spaces, in a different architectural setting I would suggest to place these spatially in a diagonal.

You could say that you need the Close to Close, Doppelganger, and After…

to offer a form of balance or antidote to all the noise, but you already have, for example, Untitled #1 (a green, life-size figurine balancing a stack of secondhand books on the head) and #2 (a blue, life-size figurine balancing a stack of tableware on the head; for supporting Unoriginal Sin I, Valentine Willie received this work).

If I may make a suggestion, Unoriginal Sin II at LAF could include the following works (and, of course, new works that are in the making): Maju Terus, Pantang Mundur!

Dark Father Untitled #1 Untitled #3 Gothic One Man Band (after Selasar, this work was exhibited at Soemardja Gallery, but without the music, which was your decision so it wouldn’t overshadow the works by other artists, but your act of kindness altered the work) Itu Tuh, Kolektornya di Belakang Pohon!

Stairway to Heaven Centil Sekali Aku Bukan Pengemis Cinta, Tapi Aku Patah Hati…

Guru Kencing Berdiri (Tapi Malu-malu) Art in the Expired Field

While Maju Terus, Pantang Mundur! and Dark Father are the focal points, Stairway to Heaven is the linchpin. The latter installation is vital to Unoriginal Sin because it shows what is at stake. You have devoted your life to the arts.

And what’s at stake is personal. In Stairway to Heaven, if we pay attention, there is, apart from appropriated elements, an intimate touch, a memorial of sorts, which is – for the lack of a better word – beautiful…

Okay, I need a rest, but lets have coffee soon.

Ciao,

Roy

manifesto #superduperdecorativeart

1. #superduperdecorativeart comes by many names and in different disguises.

2. We will no longer allow for any more boring art!

3. What cannot be said, should be joked about.

4.

5. #superduperdecorativeart is beyond beauty yet aesthetic.

6. #superduperdecorativeart is artificial and characterized by a high-degree of plasticity.

7.#superduperdecorativeart has no clear-cut genesis, it's and continuous to be the bastard child of a great many artists, with and without talent.

8. No one is an artist until one is an artist.

9. #superduperdecorativeart embraces mimetic desire: that our desires are our own is a wonderful illusion.

10. #superduperdecorativeart has limited use for authenticity. Authenticity can be regarded a useful artifice though.

11. #superduperdecorativeart plays with an infinite feedback loop: reflexive self-plagiarism is called for in our digital modernity.

12. #superduperdecorativeart quotes, samples, pirates, forges, bootlegs, imitates, borrows, mimics, copies transposes, plagiarizes, steals, appropriates

and echoes from whatever sources we see fit: nothing is holy.

13.

14.

15. #superduperdecorativeart's interventions are unpredictable and unstable – long live contingency!

16. #superduperdecorativeart does not spell everything out, use your imagination anyway you like to finish works on display.

17. #superduperdecorativeart does not aim to bridge contemporary art and everyday life, whatever the latter might mean, but see statement 12.

18. #superduperdecorativeart does not make statements, let alone statements on factual reality.

19. Pure logics does not apply to the aesthetics of #superduperdecorativeart, which does not mean that #superduperdecorativeart is beyond discourse, but, for a change, lets speak in French tongues, paradoxes, lies, hyperboles and contradictions.

20. Sometimes a shoe is just that: a shoe. Sometimes a shoe does not signify or symbolize a meaningful concept or idea (but sometimes, maybe, it does).

21. #superduperdecorativeart does not care the slightest for democracy, but does care about/for aesthetics as well as ethics (the two sides of the same proverbial coin).

22. #superduperdecorativeart is post-post-colonial art as well as post-identity politics.

23. #superduperdecorativeart offers pleasure: emotional, spiritual as well as intellectual pleasure – but can also cause discomfort in the faint hearted. It is, therefore, best enjoyed in small doses in good company.

24.

25. Every day is a great day for #superduperdecorativeart; no one has the last word on #superduperdecorativeart, not even the artist (nor this author).

26. #superduperdecorativeart does not want to win popularity contests, yet, #superduperdecorativeart might, one day, go viral and become the neo-avantgarde, possibly the new 0.1 percent.

27. None of the above statements have any claim to originality. Moreover, this manifesto is far from complete (like noise, silence can be convenient).

28. The author cannot be hold responsible for the interpretations of this work of fiction.

29. Copyright does not apply to the above statements nor the manifesto as a whole.

30. None of the above statements nor the manifesto as a whole are manifestations of art.

31. Needless to say, the artist does not agree with any of the above statements nor with the manifesto as a whole.

Roy Voragen (1974) is from the Netherlands and he lives in Indonesia since 2003. Until 2010, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses philosophy and political theory at universities in Bandung and Jakarta. Since 2010, he is involved in the contemporary art scene as an art writer and as a freelance curator. In 2011 he founded Roma Arts (romaarts.org), a collaborative nomadic initiative, which promotes passionate, ambitious and focused ways of producing, presenting, experiencing, and writing about the diverse forms of the arts. In 2013, Roma Arts started the website Contemporary Arts Bandung (contemporaryartsbandung.com) to promote art-related events in Bandung.