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Past Auction Catalogue - SG001 |
The Regent Singapore 3rd May 2009 |
| Lots | ||||||||
| 161-180 | 181-200 | 201-206 | ||||||
Lot 181 |
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Estimate: |
S$ 8,000 – 12,000 |
| Exhibited: | Nature’s Testimony – Suraji’s Solo Exhibition, Laggeng Gallery, Magelang, March 15 -30, 2008 |
| Provenance: | Laggeng Gallery Acquired from the above by present owner. |
| Suraji was born 1971 in Bantul, Yogyakarta. He graduated from the Faulty of Fine Arts at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta in 2001. He has won numerous awards for his works at events held in Indonesia and abroad, such as the Osaka Triennal, the 2002 and 2003 Indo Art Awards and the Hyogo International Competition of Painting, Japan in 2005. Suraji is deeply concerned with socio-political issues in his country. Since the mid-1998 he has been taking political intrigues and their effects as significant subject matters for his paintings. With rich interesting visual forms, Suraji brings to life the realities of daily life, globalization, industrialization and modernity with his strange menagerie of animals and humanoids. “Habluminanas” means human existence. This is a deeply personal work by the artist, which was inspired by his own experience of the May 2006 earthquake that struck Indonesia. Dated 2006, Indonesia experienced a most catastrophic earthquake that year which left almost 6000 dead and 1.5 million homeless. Suraji himself was preparing for a solo exhibition, but the event was cancelled when the earthquake destroyed 13 of his works that were meant for the show. This tragedy left an indelible mark in the artist’s mind, which further inspired him in his work. In his work, Suraji painted the heads of various animals, a man, a ladybird as well as a leaf and placed them within grids. This web of life is superimposed upon the image of a tree and a rose. Here he seemed to show the inter-species relationship and the web of life that have been affected by the Earthquake, how all living things are intrinsically linked. Suraji does not imply that humans destroy the ecological balance. Rather, he believes that humans are beings that obey rules of the game, and that they are able to help maintain the balance of life. Quite in contrast, he often depicts humans as victims. In fact in the painting, the sole human face exhibits simian features that are paralleled in the faces of the monkeys and apes. This painting was showcased at Nature’s Testimony held in March 2007 in Magelang, Central Java. Suraji saw the solo show as homage to the victims of the earthquake in Yogyakarta, himself among them for his own losses. |
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