The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

114 Rudi Mantofani What is aslant and what is oblique To know what is aslant and what is oblique To know where the shadow of a word lays Clarity comes even before shown A glimpse of fish in the water Its mysteries unfold A traditional Minangkabau aphorism 1 Rudi Mantofani makes beautiful objects and paintings whose crisp surfaces and precise facture suggest absolute certainty. One imagines, at first glance, that these assured works are completely legible. Look again: for every one of his sculptures, like the series of eccentric guitar works shown in APT6, or his detailed ‘representational’ paintings, is aslant, oblique, bent — to use current parlance. It’s not just that the guitars themselves are wickedly unplayable, with their multiple necks positioned so it would be impossible for the suggested number of players to strike a note. One instrument is cut in half, another curves improbably, the necks of others are too long for human arms. Perfectly inaccessible, these guitars frustrate our desire to hold them, play our fingers across the strings, release their magnificent chords. The guitars are gorgeous, and Mantofani has fastidiously crafted them himself, from scratch, so these impossibilities are deliberate: these are not transformed ready-made objects, they are custom-made affronts to common usage and common sense. What are we to make of these glossy enigmatic objects, which seem on one hand to be so straightforward, yet on the other so perverse? The sturdy ambiguity of Mantofani’s sculptures, together with the resolute refusal of his Jendela Group to issue manifestos, has played brilliantly to the didactic, politically committed strain in Indonesian contemporary art. A critical storm raged over the meaning or, more precisely, what seemed a problematical lack of clear meaning in Jendela Group works, with their focus on everyday, overlooked, even banal, objects and subjects; veteran curator Jim Supangkat astutely noted the characteristic ‘silence’ of Jendela works. 2 The artists, including Mantofani, have been accused of errors ranging from formalism to lack of ‘soul’ to failure of social commitment, the latter a particularly grievous charge given they trained in Yogyakarta, the hub of politically committed art in Indonesia. 3 If artists from Bandung, the other important contemporary art centre, are stereotyped as Western- influenced formalists, where does this leave artists like Mantofani? Occupying a carefully chosen position that eschews singular meanings in favour of a plethora of open possibilities, of open allusions — the word Jendela itself means ‘window’ in Bahasa Indonesia. What is aslant, as the Minangkabau aphorism wisely implies, is not the same as what is oblique. One is merely a fact, the other an intention. Mantofani evades the simple opposition of Yogyakarta figuration versus Bandung abstraction. I am struck by the wide range of art history references in his guitar series: Pop art, with his deadpan presentation of perfect simulacra; Cubism, since Picasso and Braque used guitars for experimental still-life compositions before World War One; and his paintings, which often disturb exquisite landscapes with non-representational blocks of colour, gesture to Yogyakarta’s enduring fascination with veristic Surrealism, as much as to abstraction. As several writers noted, Mantofani works with a multiplicity of cultural sources and signs. 4 Here, Mantofani plays around with music. More often than not, outsiders associate Indonesian music with gamelan orchestras from Bali or Java, making assumptions that perplex contemporary Indonesians who play music ranging from local traditional forms to European classics, and whose younger generations are fans of rock music. Rock uses electric guitars, and Mantofani’s perfect yet estranged versions evoke a complex of tensions in contemporary Indonesia: between imported versus local cultures, expensive consumer goods and unrealisable desires for ownership and status, the growth of mall culture and the persistence of traditional cultural and social values. Life is full of contradictions: Mantofani recently said that for him the guitars are ‘symbols of exaggeration, distortion and amplification, in a negative sense . . . symbols of the distortion of reality.’ 5 I regularly pass a guitar shop in Brisbane. The electric guitars hanging on its walls make one bright shiny silent promise, in unison: the possibility of immense noise, of harmony or discord. Mantofani’s title for many guitar sculptures is Nada yang hilang — ‘The lost note’. Potentiality does not ensure action, then, and imagination must summon what is lacking. Rudi Mantofani’s art may be oblique, but his invitation remains open. Let the band play on. Julie Ewington Endnotes 1 Quoted in Enin Supriyanto, ‘Seeing through the window’, in Jendela: A Play of the Ordinary [exhibition catalogue], NUS Museum and Gajah Gallery, Singapore, 2009, pp.10–19, 15. Supriyanto argues Minang word play is crucial for Kelompok Seni Rupa Jendela (KSRJ), or Jendela Fine Art Group, all of whom come from West Sumatra and, as Minangkabau people, speak Minang as their preferred language. 2 Jim Supangkat, ‘Exploration into the world of things’, in The Culture of Things: Solo Exhibition by Rudi Mantofani [exhibition catalogue], CP Artspace, Jakarta, 2006, p.1. 3 Critic Agus Dermawan T, writing in Kompas in 2000, accused KSRJ of being ‘indecent’ and ‘lazy’. See Supriyanto, pp.12–13. 4 Ahmad Mashadi in Jendela: A Play of the Ordinary , pp.3–8, and Wang Zineng, ‘Wondrous visions, simple truths’, Asian Art News , vol.18(2), March–April 2008, pp.91–5. 5 Email from Gajah Gallery, Singapore, 22 October 2009. See also Wang Zineng, p.94–5; the original inspiration for the guitar works was when Mantofani saw rock musicians playing at a New York charity concert in 2005 and reflected on the contradictions between this and US foreign policy.