Hansen Solo Painting Exhibition - IMMUTABLE OBJECTS
10 - 27 Agustus 2007 Soemardja Gallery - Jl. Ganeca 10 Bandung
Fine Art and Design Department - Bandung Technologie Institute
Curator by Aminudin TH. Siregar
In 2006, when I saw Hansen for the first time, his latest work emerged two contradictory problems at the same time, paintings with figurative tendencies which also indicated some approaches to abstract. These approaches to abstract expressionism were intensely shown in his solo exhibition Celebration of Inner Dancing II in early 2006. At the exhibition, we were faced with some problems related to ‘abstract styles’, particularly when Hansen created many object deformations, combinations of the different paint brush width, textures, liquefied paints and the balance of compositions. Besides that, viewed from his concepts, Hansen tried to establish a link of understandings between West and East aesthetics or in other words, between West’s abstract expressionism and East’s expressionism represented by calligraphy. Needless to say that processes of creating all of his artwork are based on the concepts mentioned above. Meanwhile, Hansen is fully aware of the convergence between West and East might result in an illusion, but he is undeniably conscious that both could lead to a harmony.

As far as I’m concerned, the abstract expressionism really shows Hansen’s strong distinctiveness as an artist. The West-East abstract expressionism is also the focus of his solo exhibition in Soemardja Gallery at this moment, which also has a major appeal in the academic context of Fine Art of ITB. Therefore, displaying Hansen’s acrylic paintings with abstract expressionism problems is very reasonable concerning that Fine Art of ITB is, in history, one of the infamous base-camps – or using Trisno Sumardjo’s legendary term “West Laboratory” –of abstract paintings practices in Indonesia. First of all, disregard the term abstract as the main focus of Hansen’s paintings tendencies in this exhibition because not all of his paintings are pure abstract, he also painted some base forms of recognizable daily objects. Analyzed from his previous artistic paths, Hansen’s attitude tends to be in between ‘abstraction’ and ‘representation’, between tangible and intangible things.

Hansen is neither fully freeing canvas as a two dimensional medium nor releasing his work from desires to tell stories, like most of the abstract work in the history of Fine Art. His dualism attitude has its own appeal to disclosure abstract painting styles in Indonesia. Furthermore, his efforts to tell stories through paintings are reflected by his ways of naming each painting. These have not only become his unique characteristics, because most of Indonesian abstract artists have the same uniqueness.

For example, in two of his paintings Awareness and Dance with the Wind (2007), we can see shapes like teapot and hairdryer. Another example is Empty Mind #2 (2007), of which a bottle was blatantly painted. In each painting, Hansen divided the canvas into parts where chosen objects were placed as if each object could not be changed or was presumably immutable to the deformation itself. Thus, his paintings keep two important matters, real form objects and simplification of objects that freely compositing themselves into a harmony. We can also conclude that his paintings not only resulting in a harmony but also resulting some ‘tensions’ between those two matters which are analyzed as reflections of impurity, abnormality, paradox or eccentricity; or presumed as reflections of origins of abstract genre in Indonesia’s context. In summary, Hansen can be categorized as one of abstract painters who is emerging the issues of abstract expressionism in Indonesia.

As we all know, many of our art observers and art critics try to comprehend that the accuracy of abstract paintings practices in Indonesia is not the same as the one in the Western countries. However, the birth of abstract expressionism in Indonesia was not based on coincidences or accidental practices. Even so, it is undeniable that the rising of abstract expressionism was caused by the correlation between our artists and different methods of the West. At this point, fine art academy is seen as one agent that introduces artists to abstract expressionism. Debates about abstract expressionism could not reach a conclusion of its own description, especially regarding to the question is it true that abstract expressionism in Indonesia originally initiated by our own artists without the influences from the West methods? What we might find is, probably, only many doors which lead to further discussions related to this matter.

Ahmad Sadali, a famous abstract painting guru, could be the only person who tries to contradict the principles stating that abstract paintings in Indonesia are absolutely influenced by West methods. In early 1980s, in one of his writings, he issued that abstract expressionism had been practiced and had been resided within Indonesian culture for long. Ahmad Sadali’s reasons are very clear that Indonesia’s abstract expressionism tendencies were original which proven by some motifs or some patterns in its cultural artifacts all over Indonesia far from representations. In his article, he also concluded that the basis of antropomorpho- naturrealism similar to the one in the West was never really identified in different places in the Eastern world.

To Ahmad Sadali, he is convinced that the basis of antropomorpho- naturrealism is a method of representative paintings which considers human as the centre and reaches the peak as can be seen in the Western culture. The basis of antropomorpho- naturrealism has become the dogma for artists in their processes of creation spreading the influence throughout the world affecting local cultures. This basis most importantly focuses on skills of anatomy drawing and perspective drawing. In Greek’s classic tradition, all artists painted their god and goddesses in the form of human. Paintings in Indonesia are merely the same, not showing ‘realist- naturalist’ tendencies but always showing abstraction, relevant to “ideal oriental”. Ahmad Sadali also thinks that differences in the base of abstraction are diversified from ‘pure’ representation; and abstract itself is a term used to describe absolute non-representative paintings. The facts remain that people in the East are not familiar with representations of their art, just as symbols and signs. In short, people in the East are more familiar with decoration, ornament, symbolism, and intangible forms as their expressions of art.

Similar to Sadali’s provocation, critic Trisno Sumardjo tries to defend abstract expressionism with a theory that deformation tendencies and intangible forms have been long practiced by Indonesian culture. In the 1950s when S. Sudjono recommended every artist to refer back to realism, Trisno confronted: “Not only do our people understand realism, but they also understand other styles because most of us have known deformation in both forms and colours. Take notice of our traditional shadow puppets (wayang kulit), carvings of Borobudur temple, Balinese sculptures and paintings, etc. Don’t you think this artwork which was expressive, stylistic, and decorative is far from realism?”. Pros and cons about abstract painting practices in Indonesia reached their peak in the 1950s, when two opposite sides between Lekra and Culture Manifesto were up against each other regarding to this kind of art. Abstract style paintings were considered as a diversification from normal customs of fine art practices at that time which had the nationalism-society ideology. Abstract paintings were accused of being one deceptive genre to mislead everyone’s perceptions with forms which are not from reality of life. This genre which sometimes called non-objective art or non-representational art was regretted by Lekra side and was understood extremely as a representation of West’s neo-colonialism impact to Indonesia. Moreover, not only this art style was crossing Bung Karno’s revolutionary act, but also derived from the premise that Lekra strongly rejected abstract painting practices in Indonesia.

On one hand, their basis of rejection was also accompanied by powerful politic demonstrations which triggered cultural arguments. On the other hand, this condition successfully created misunderstandings towards abstract paintings for a long time. It can be concluded that Lekra had created damaging absenteeism.
Abstract expressionism was ‘founded’ by the people in the West, but they were not the only party that successfully pioneered this genre. However, we have to look at this matter from proportional perspective (having learnt from the history of the conflicts between Lekra and Cultural Manifesto). At this point, at least we can understand the context of Hansen’s abstract painting as a manifesto hoping to create a sufficient and – as mentioned before – a proportional abstract painting milieu. In the East, an object can not always be summarized, exchanged or mutated as an essence of the object itself thus eliminating its symbolic traces (index) because there are times when people in the East still consider the importance of presenting objects blatantly (immutable objects) intended to remind people of the real forms of these objects.