Nyanyian Lirih Untuk Kisah Kisah Kecil

Nyanyian Lirih Untuk Kisah-kisah Kecil

for the detail video please check on VIMEO

LIVING ROOM at S 14, Bandung

interactive puppet installation

drawing and automata: koganecho calling

video of drawing automata

"LIVING ROOM", Artist In Residence, Koganecho Yokohama Japan

Papermoon Puppet Theatre, headed by visual artist Iwan Effendi and playwright Ria Sulistyani, reaches far beyond the traditional and explores the possibilities of puppetry through productions made with creators from a wide variety of fields. The voiceless Papermoon puppets, charming yet expressing an air of unease in their faces, do not limit themselves to stage performances, but also make appearances in the everyday spaces around us. With both light and dark undertones, the performances present a scathing criticism of social authority, all the while conveying hope in the power of the individual.

In addressing the Living Room theme, Papermoon transformed the second floor of an old house into an interactive installation piece by pursuing the traces of the past left in the wooden structure’s walls and beams. In a way, the space represented a meeting place where people, objects, and the past, present and future encounter each other. A hanging puppet greets the “audience” as they begin their ascent up the stairs, and once reaching the top, find a troupe of small, headless marionettes dancing before their eyes. An enormous, larger than life puppet with long, dangling limbs occupies one corner of the room. Sprite-like creatures peep curiously at spectators from the wooden posts scattered about the space. The body of a single marionette lays encased inside an incubator-like box, next to which on an earthen wall that looks as if it could crumble down at any moment, hangs a scrolling floral motif painting. Lastly, in the far corner, there stand the miniature, white buildings of a fictional town.

The “stage” does not provide the audience with any pre-conceived scenario. Instead, the story begins when observers first step into the room and begin to interact with the objects and puppets, bringing the space to life each with his or her own memories and power of imagination. In this way, the puppets who silently await our arrival, present not a one-sided tale, but rather open to us the possibilities of interactive storytelling.

Mayumi Hirano, Koganecho Area Management

all photo by: Yasuyuki Kasagi

money culture

no money no hope, graphite, coffee stain on watercolor paper, wood, 2011

my online catalog

http://issuu.com/gamaliel_wb/docs/iwaneffendi

by ozwildlifestudio.com

Reviewed by: http://ozwildlifestudio.com/featured/iwan-effendi-featured-artist/

Iwan Effendi is a young Indonesian artist who attended art schools and has already had numerous exhibitions under his belt. I was immediately struck by the power of Iwan’s strong imagery and vivid colours. Before finding out anything about the inspiration behind this talented artist’s works, I loved the juxtaposition of his beautiful, sensitive imagery of nature and wildlife with more mysterious, disturbing elements which appeared to me as as freakish dolls or innocent, newborn children, missiles or alien spacecraft and tornadoes or nuclear clouds.

The Crane Song by Iwan Effendi

The picture you see above is what inspired me to have a closer look at this artist and his work and made me want to find out more about what exactly was going on in this artwork. Iwan said this about Crane Song “it is a diptych of opposing colours of blue and orange tones composed of a man who wears eyes as his cloak”

Iwan Effendi

Maybe we need to look back at history to see where Ivan’s imagery is coming from. Here is an entry from an article written by Marilyn Goh.

In 1965, Indonesia found itself once again at a political crossroads after having endured an extended period of political instability since securing independence from Dutch colonial rule. In the twilight of President Sukarno’s rule in 1965 marked by bitter ideological conflict and political polarization, a coup at the end of September triggered a widespread wave of violence that brought General Suharto to office for over 3 decades. Generations removed from these events after 5 decades, the suppression of dissident artistic voices in the Suharto’s iron-fisted rule mean that contemporary Indonesian artists have only in recent years, begun their cathartic response to the trauma.

Eye of the Messenger by Iwan Effendi

This artwork is a response to the turmoil: interrogating the construction of Indonesian history in political upheaval of the 1960s and ultimately acknowledges that the socio-cultural and political discourses surrounding these years are cultivated, cultured and fabricated.

The works in Eye of the Messenger are ironic and multi-layered: dismembered, colourful body parts float in the dimensional space of the canvasses and are tacked onto each other. They can’t be contained by the boundaries of canvas, spilling out of the seams and onto the surrounding white walls. Unlike the luminous simplicity and crack-quality of flat-faced satiric drawings that invite ridicule and laughter, Effendi’s cartoonish works cry out like multiple voices in a Greek tragedy clamouring to claim their own truth. In this context of use, reception and exchange, Effendi’s works accrue a varied interpretive history of – and perhaps even grant absolution to –those who have found finally regained their silenced voices.

“Long Lost Memories” by Iwan Effendi

Iwan describes “Long Lost Memories” as a piece of bulbous objects, bird eggs and birds that peer disconcertingly into nothingness. “But thank god, our eyes can’t lie,” Effendi further remarks. Ocularity and perception feature prominently in his canvases; the physical eye, and by extension, the visual experience, is used as a cautionary metaphor because of its ability to fall prey to yet simultaneously, resist manipulations.

Imaginative characters placed amidst the bright colors of a never-never land is the visual language of Iwan Effendi. Ofttimes we come across war-like visual elements in his works; aircraft, tank, which occasionally deformed in animal shapes. It allied closely to his fondness for war stories, such as the epic of the Second World War. It was into this tale that Iwan unravelled his ideas.

Iwan Efendi’s imagery also became characters in the form of puppets. His grandfather had been a puppeteer artist who devoted himself to the tradition of wayang. in He heard the story about the arrest of his grandfather, a puppeteer artist who devoted himself to the tradition of wayang. He, as well, understood that his grandfather was arrested for being alleged as a member of Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI).

Iwan's Puppet Show

Puppet Performance in the opening of Iwan Effendi solo show at Yavuz Fine Art

The opportunity to meet Maria Tri Sulistyani, a children’s book author who later became his beloved wife, has led him to visualizations of children’s tales from around the world. He did not stop there; he developed Papermoon puppet theatre, which was formerly initiated by Maria. Together with his wife, Iwan began exploring the medium of puppets. To Iwan Effendi, the expansion of his visual expressions into puppet theatre is an extraordinary challenge that would meet no end. Accepting and referring to the philosophy of puppet theatre—“sincerity of being nobody”—Iwan put aside his ego as an artist and surrender himself to the world of puppeteering. It had not been an easy start, yet lately he found it intensely addictive; puppet theatre has animated his visual figures. extract from an article written by Ade Tanesia

Sources: Ade Tanesia and Marilyn Goh