Gajah Gallery is pleased to announce our first ever showing at the prestigious West Bund Art and Design, which annually hosts over 100 of the world’s leading art galleries. For Shanghai’s premier art event, Gajah Gallery will feature an exceptional line-up of works by some of the most renowned contemporary artists in Southeast Asia. This year’s edition will be held from 7 – 10 November at the West Bund Art Center, Shanghai.
In Shanghai, the Gallery will showcase new works Rudi Mantofani and Yunizar – founding members of the Jendela Art Group, widely considered Indonesia’s most prominent art collective. A master of multiple mediums, Yunizar’s practice is ever-expanding; here, he presents his latest series of paintings and bronzes, intuitively articulated with boundless creativity.
Alongside them, we will be featuring works by several of Singapore’s most renowned women artists: Suzann Victor and Jane Lee. Both artists have produced new works in collaboration with Yogya Art Lab (YAL), a foundry and production house subsidiary of the Gallery. YAL is a platform which teams prominent and emerging artists with local craftsmen to produce works across various mediums, such as bronze, resin, aluminium, and glass; broadening their oeuvre and boosting their artistic potential.
For West Bund, Victor will premiere a new work from her acclaimed series of crushed stained-glass sculptures, endowing their subjects with an ethereal quality, transforming the surface to reach the viewer as a prayer of light.
Also showing with Gajah is rising Indonesian star Erizal As, presenting new paintings exploring the themes of extinction, corruption and the loss of identity, through the subtle changing language of the abstract. Joining him is Bali-based, American artist Ashley Bickerton, featuring new artworks that explore the Western fetishization of the ‘exotic’ through satirical imagery of the tourist as an ‘alien in paradise’.
At West Bund, as the paragon dealer of Southeast Asian art, Gajah Gallery brings together prominent contemporary artists from the region: Ashley Bickerton (USA), Erizal As (Indonesia), Jane Lee (Singapore), Jigger Cruz (Philippines), Rudi Mantofani (Indonesia), Suzann Victor (Singapore), Uji ‘Hahan’ Handoko (Indonesia) and Yunizar (Indonesia).
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ashley Bickerton is among the most well-known expatriate artists, residing in Bali for almost 25 years. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Ashley is known for his poignant social commentaries, which draw from an anthropological perspective of looking at consumerism, the cross-pollination of culture and the widespread decay of humanistic values.
Erizal As is one of the fastest emerging artists in Indonesian contemporary art, drawing the attention of regional and international collectors. His latest exhibition ‘Formless Existence’ poses a shift in the artist’s perspective, portraying the defiance of paint when seen through the lens of visual aesthetics, a metaphorical manifestation of his personal views about governance and righteousness.
Jane Lee employs unconventional materials and techniques, exploring new possibilities through a re-examination of the very components paintings are composed of. Her works operate unrestricted by the confines of the canvas, scrutinizing the art form’s significance and relevance in contemporary practice, whilst constantly pushing the boundaries of the medium.
Jigger Cruz explores the primitive memory of the figurative in contemporary painting. His artistic approach plays with ideas of defacement and vandalization. The paintings rework many of the stylistic quirks and formal concerns of classical painting, employing their basic composition and approximating their processes.
Rudi Mantofani is one of Indonesia’s most acclaimed artists, whose works are well-known for their thought-provoking experimentations with realism and absurdity. By manipulating mundane objects, the artist opens up their potential and reveals new ways of seeing through irony and illusion.
Suzann Victor is Singapore’s most notable female contemporary artist, known for her monumental public artworks, performances and kinetic installations. Her recent solo show, See Like a Heretic, saw her embarking on an archaeological process to locate the point before which readymade iconography was converted into commodities; transmuting the process of sandblasting into a ritualistic baptisement.
Uji ‘Hahan’ Handoko blurs the point of contact that exists between urbanization and agrarianism, the East and the West, the local and the global. He has been a finalist for the Sovereign Art Prize in 2008, and has participated in residencies and shows across Indonesia, Korea, Italy and Cuba.
Yunizar continually proves his massive appeal to international audiences, enchanting collectors and curators all over the world, his work being collected by various major public and private collections, including the Long Museum, China. His work reflects an ideal of imaginative and authentic expression, using a combination of primitive markings and elementary forms to create a universal visual language.
