The threads of an ongoing love affair with your art Preface – Roy Voragen
Occasionally – when fortunate, with effortless effort – we experience a poetic encounter with a work of art and this experience, in turn, lingers in our memory for times to come and unexpectedly can reflexively pop-up again into our thoughts while doing something completely mundane like sipping hot coffee in the morning. The experience of art and the memory of it can morph us – become part of our body, part of who we are or who we want to become. We are all art thieves. Our memory takes care of that; we (unwillingly) take home the unexpected, exquisiteness as well as the uncanny – a rough brush stroke here, a fine pen line there. For this, art needs to travel. For this, we need to travel – and leave our comfort zone behind, go back & forth to exhibition spaces and meet time after time works of art. And to my delight, artworks of my friends Besti Rahulasmoro and S.E. Dewantoro – both artists are based in Bandung – make a (temporary) move to Yogyakarta – the vibrant art capital of Indonesia – so my friends and many, many others in Yogyakarta can experience these works that very much deserve to be in the limelight at Bentara Budaya. For this, I
thank Kerensa Johnston and DarahRouge to labor the exhibition String Theory to life. Dear Besti Rahulasmoro and S.E. Dewantoro, congratulations! And I wish your exhibition String Theory at Bentara Budaya, Yogyakarta, a very long second life in our embodied memories. Roy Voragen (fatumbrutum.blogspot.com), from Amsterdam, is a Bandung-based art writer. Above artwork is by Besti Rahulasmoro.