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...
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...
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 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...
Milena Bonilla’s discursive practice explores connections among economics, territory, and politics through everyday interventions...
The five drawings included in the 101 Collection are representative of Pettibon’s characteristic cartoonish style...
Untitled (Construction) recalls the series of glass cubes that gained Bell international recognition in the 1960s...
In Made In Heaven , we are face to face with a sculptural apparition, a divine visitation in the artist’s studio...
7″ Single ‘Pop In’ by Martin Kippenbergher consisting of a vinyl record and a unique artwork drawn by the artist on the record’s sleeve...
The three monkeys in Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak are a recurring motif in Gupta’s work and refer to the Japanese pictorial maxim of the “three wise monkeys” in which Mizaru covers his eyes to “see no evil,” Kikazaru covers his ears to “hear no evil,” and Iwazaru covers his mouth to “speak no evil.” For the various performative and photographic works that continue this investigation and critique of the political environment, Gupta stages children and adults holding their own or each other’s eyes, mouths and ears...
Walking Through is one of a series of videos—sometimes humorous, often absurd—that record the artist’s performative interactions with objects in a particular site...
The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
Untitled (Wheelchair Drawing) is a ten-foot photo transfer of the image of a wheelchair with burning embers in its seat...