The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Wedhar Riyadi’s art explores the idea of contradiction. Expressed through a dramatic visual language and recurring themes, Riyadi’s work reflects the complexities inherent in Indonesia’s rapidly changing society and its chaotic encounters between religions and secular Western influences. Inspired by visual languages as diverse as decades-old portrait photography and underground comics, Riyadi explores these complications by juxtaposing the historical and the contemporary, realism and fantasy, in his large-scale oil paintings, as featured in APT7. Born in Yogyakarta in 1980, Riyadi studied at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts and is part of a generation of artists who emerged during the country’s democratic reforms in the late 1990s. This was a period of intense political and social turmoil triggered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998. The transition to democracy was characterised by ethnic and religious conflict throughout the country — ‘The dark impacts of the violence occurring during the 1997–2000 Reform Movement period are still felt today’. 1 This turbulent history, together with an ongoing undercurrent of religious tension, resonates in the cartoonish depictions of extreme violence in Riyadi’s art. While many Indonesian artists were strongly involved in the political activism of the student and youth movements, Riyadi bases his work on personal experiences: I spent my childhood surrounded by Java’s culture, whilst consuming a lot of television shows including cartoons, sci-fi, horror and action shows, as well as imported comics, anime and manga. 2 Riyadi draws heavily on these influences and is representative of a trend in contemporary Indonesian art that is deeply immersed in street art, popular culture and subcultural styles. This anti-Establishment aesthetic is typified by work that is ‘provocative, eye-catching and with messages easily communicable to the public’. 3 In his paintings in APT7, images of weapons, disembodied eyes and severed grinning heads called tuyul — which take the form of animals and cartoon characters — overlay meticulously detailed renderings of historical photographs from the 1950s and 60s. Sourced from markets in Yogyakarta, the photographs of a lone male figure, a man and woman and a family portrait were selected by the artist to reflect the multiculturalism of Indonesia, with clothing and surroundings indicating elements of Javanese, Chinese or European culture. In Keributan Dari Negara Subur 2011, Riyadi’s delicate and beautiful rendering of a man dressed in a European-style white suit is transformed by motifs. His face and torso are encased in a cloak of rocks and his sides are pierced with sharpened sticks and knives. A bleeding lotus flower droops from his hand and grotesque bulging eyeballs float from his face. The contrast between the fantasy-like motifs and the photo-realism of the portraits reverberates with echoes of past violence, together with the conflict experienced in Indonesian society today. These works also embody Riyadi’s belief that the line between realism and fantasy is now blurred, with technology saturating daily life and changing the meaning of reality itself. 4 Riyadi does not shy away from engaging with these new visual technologies. On the contrary, his dark reflections on secular society are expressed through murals, comics, customised skateboard decks and limited edition plush toys. He is a regular contributor to the activities of the independent art collective Daging Tumbuh, based in Yogyakarta, which, since 2000, has been publishing and distributing amateur comic books, or zines. Riyadi, in collaboration with fellow artist Eko Nugroho, has also opened a shop in Yogyakarta called Fight for Rice (FFR), through which they sell badges, T-shirts, key chains and other merchandise featuring their designs. 5 Through these means, Riyadi’s work is circulated in the same spheres of contemporary culture referenced in his work. Reflecting on the influence of modernisation, Riyadi has said: To me, modernization is not something that we have to reject altogether, but it rather challenges us to appropriate, choose, and filter while testing one’s faith amidst the increasingly strong current of global modernization. 6 Wedhar Riyadi’s visual language is vibrant and eclectic in its adaptation of different aesthetic styles. The dialogue he has conceived between past and present results in a collision of the macabre and the beautiful, and creates provocative and unnerving images reflecting the experiences of his generation in Indonesia. Laura Mudge 1 Enin Supriyanto, Tales from Wounded-land [exhibition catalogue], Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York, 2009. 2 Wedhar Riyadi, cited in Serenella Ciclitira (eds.), Indonesian Eye: Contemporary Indonesian Art , Skira Editore, Milan, Italy, 2011, p.228. 3 Rifky Effendy, Finding Me: (his)Story of Lowbrow, Street Art and Animamix in Indonesia [exhibition catalogue], Semarang Gallery, Semarang, Indonesia, 2011. 4 Wedhar Riyadi, email communication with curator Alia Swastika and the author, 18 May 2012. 5 Jean-Marc Decrop, Asia: Looking South [exhibition catalogue], Arndt, Berlin, 2011. 6 Hendro Wiyanto, Flesh, A Sword and Cacophony [exhibition catalogue], Ark Galerie, Jakarta, 2011. WEDHAR RIYADI Colliding contradictions WEDHAR RIYADI Indonesia b.1980 Keributan Dari Negara Subur 2011 Oil on canvas / 250 x 180cm / Purchased 2011. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery 184