Entang Wiharso: Meta Landscape
May 14 - June18, 2022
Entang Wiharso has a multi-disciplinary practice and speaks with urgency through any cogent channel that fits his immediate need, be it painting, sculpture, video, installation or performance. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, he is widely regarded for his unique depictions of contemporary life that employ a dramatic visual language, creating artworks that exist in relation to the mythologies of a centuries-old animist past and the high-speed, hyper-connected lifestyle of the 21st century. Maintaining studios in both Indonesia and the US, his life and immediate family are bicultural, biracial and the inheritors of diverse religious and spiritual legacies.
Related Events:
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 14, 5 - 7 pm
JAC-on-the-Go: Tour Harvard University Asia Center with the artist: Tuesday, May 17, 10 am - 1 pm
Workshop: All that Glitters: Form, Meaning, and Materials: Monday, May 23, 2022, 10 am to 2 pm
Recent work focuses on the duality of cultures and experiences in his two homelands, building on ideas that connect spirituality and transcendence with national narratives about progress and destiny through a sustained exploration of landscape and geopolitical structures.
WATCH: Artists in Conversation with Bob Dilworth and Entang Wiharso
May, 2022
Full transcript of the video is below.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Wiharso has had more than 45 solo exhibitions including at Tang Contemporary Art, Bangkok; Marc Straus, New York, NY; Mizuma Gallery, Singapore; ARNDT, Berlin/Singapore; Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore; Bernier/Eliades, Athens, Greece; Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Kalamazoo; Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta; and Can’s Gallery, Jakarta;. Wiharso has participated in biennial exhibitions including Kunming Biennale (2018-19); Prospect.3 New Orleans (2014-15), Venice Biennale (2005, 2013), Prague Biennale 6 (2013), 1st Nanjing Biennale (2010) among others, as well as in international group exhibitions at institutions including National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY; Jeonbuk Museum, Korea; Museum MACAN, Jakarta; Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore; Museum of Modern Art, Gunma; Hilger Brotkunsthalle, Vienna; Singapore Art Museum; Singapore; Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta; Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; and Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Ithaca, NY.
Entang Wiharso, Perfect Mirror, 2013-2014. Oil color on mirror, aluminum, resin, color pigment, thread, 220 x 330 cm / 86.5 x 130 in. Edition of 2 in aluminum + 2 AP (one in aluminum and one in graphite). Courtesy of the artist and Black Goat Studios. Photo: Lim Sin Thai
Image at the top: Entang Wiharso, Fruit of Silence No.3, 2021, Glitter and acrylic on canvas, 112 x 78.74 in.Photo courtesy Black Goat Studios
Transcript from Coffee and Conversation with Bob Dilworth and Entang Wiharso
Danielle Ogden (DO): Hello! My name is Danielle Ogden and I'm the Interim Curator of Public Programs at the Jamestown Art Center, and we're delighted to be joined by Bob Dilworth, who has a show at Cade Tompkins Projects, in Providence and Entang Wiharso, whose show Meta Landscape opens at the Jamestown Art Center on May 14. We're here in the midst of installation. Both artists have a practice that mines and tackles issues around race, ethnicity, culture, history, art history, and our current times and we are excited to have them in conversation today.
Bob Dilworth (BD): Welcome! and I am so looking forward to your upcoming show, Meta Landscape. So what I want to ask you is to all about the piece behind us, give us the title, and what you're trying to say?
Entang Wiharso (EW): It’s called Divider. The divider is the flag pole. I grew up in Indonesia and came here in 1997. My experience when I was a kid, and then growing up from city to other city during the election, there were always people carrying a flag. I feel like the flag becomes a tool not to unite, but to divide. From party to party, they are always against each other and there are more than two parties. When I was growing up there were more than three and at some point there were more than fifteen parties. Watching that situation and then during the election here, it brought that memory back. We believe in the flag as a united symbol, but it becomes a divider, it becomes something else. With this work, I wanted to put up this flagpole, but the flag is invisible.
BD: This is wonderful. I have known Entang for a very long time. I am one of his deepest admirers. Your work is not just amazing, but it is filled with symbolism. And the way that you talk about your experience as an artist and also as a dual citizen of Indonesia as well as America, can you talk a little more about the role of symbolism in your work?
EW: Sometimes I am conscious of using symbolism, but I am more about the visual code. Sometimes I also play with the symbol. I twist the way I present it and I change the meaning. With Divider, this is all landscape. When I see the landscape, I am always wondering what kind of people live in this kind of landscape. I am talking about the landscape not just in terms of the physical landscape, but I also incorporate the psychological landscape. This is why I wanted to call the exhibition, Meta Landscape. When you see the landscape, I am always questioning what is behind the landscape.
BD: Entang, what would you like the viewers to take away from the exhibition?
EW: That’s a lot! I want them to take a lot of things.
BD: Name two things!
EW: One is about how I am trying to talk about all kinds of issues and situations, about justice, about landscape, the beauty of the landscape… but also the people who live there. I incorporate social issues, politics, but there is also an aesthetic side. For example, when I created this work, it’s glittery and peaceful. Some people love glitter and some people don’t. To me, glitter can be macho…men can be glittery too.
BD: Let me tell you what I take away. I look at this, as with your other pieces with glitter and the glitter is so beautiful and it’s shiny and it’s sparking, and it draws you into it, but then once you are drawn into it, then you have to confront all of these issues that you talk about that plaque history, that plaque society, that plaque contemporary life. So you have this beautiful painting, but then you realize that there is a flagpole without a flag and realize that you are talking about the divided as opposed to the united. There is a glitter that brings us into it and we are drawn into the beauty of it, but then we are smacked with these really hard issues that you articulate so well.
EW: It’s hard to say with words sometimes, but I am hoping people will have open discussion through this work. That is why I use glitter… to tackle very uncomfortable issues.
BD: Absolutely, this is really good, because what art does is it helps us to have these really difficult conversations.
May 2022, Jamestown Arts Center