Nugroho’s installations and performances have their roots in the shadow puppet rituals in Indonesia, particularly the Javanese Wayang tradition whose essence is in the representation of the shadows. Nugroho’s work both preserves traditional culture and offers a contemporary interpretation of it through his insertion of comical figures to comment on current social conditions. Moving Landscape includes characters such as a diamond-headed man, a UFO, and other items that appear frequently in Nugroho’s drawings and murals. The shadows and silhouettes rotate in a custom-made, lit tent structure to create a fantasy world that blurs the line between daily life and fiction. The narratives here are complex and ambiguous and speak to a range of psychological states that echo everyday reality.
Working with a variety of media including comics, animation, mural painting, graffiti, embroidery, video, and puppetry, Yogyakarta-based artist Eko Nugroho comments on social justice, cultural tradition, and the human condition. The concepts, materials, and strategies of his oeuvre reflect a sophisticated understanding of “fine art,” crafts, as well as street art. For example, Nugroho’s use of embroidery is inspired by local street gangs whose jackets are embroidered with their logos and by the embroidered badges worn by local government officials to announce their affiliations. After the Indonesian Reformation in 1998, Nugroho started to use caricature in his work to criticize the government’s policies about democracy, freedom, and censorship. These metamorphic figures, their surroundings, and the idioms indicate the dysfunction of contemporary Indonesian society as well as the tribulations of the world at large.
In the flash animation SpringValle_ber_girls , Petra Cortright collages together surreal scenes out of unnaturally idyllic desktop screensavers with equally unreal computer-generated women that pop in and out of the landscape...
In her 2011 webcam video, Sickhands , Cortright poses before her in-computer camera, as her hands, hair, and body begin waving and rippling vertically across the screen, distorted by software effects...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
The five drawings included in the 101 Collection are representative of Pettibon’s characteristic cartoonish style...
Julio Cesar Morales’s watercolor drawings, Undocumented Intervention , show a variety of surprising hiding places assumed by people trying to cross into the United States without documentation...
Composed of four images, the series Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta (2011) explores the artist’s observation of how Javanese mythology and cosmology have marked the geography of Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Indonesia...
In Made In Heaven , we are face to face with a sculptural apparition, a divine visitation in the artist’s studio...
The Simpson Verdict is a three-minute animation by Kota Ezawa that portrays the reading of the verdict during the OJ Simpson trial, known as the “most publicized” criminal trial in history...
Reborn, 2010 is a three-channel video by Desiree Holman that questions ideas of motherhood and the maternal instinct...
Martin Kippenberger’s late collages are known for incorporating a wide range of materials, from polaroids and magazine clips to hotel stationery, decals, and graphite drawings...
Conceived as a large-scale mural-like projection, Color of History, Sweating Rocks is a neo-futuristic, hybrid film that combines cinematic language, collage, animation, and inventive forms to highlight the plight of the peoples of the Sahara—and refugees in general—who have been displaced by oil-mining....
Contrabando is a work that references the larger sociological phenomenon in which immigrant economic strategies come to infiltrate urban landscapes...
A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...
Tanaka’s unique understanding of objects and materials is reflected in the four photographs that document his Process of Blowing Flour ...
These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...
The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...
This artwork was part of a group of projects presented in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013...