What remains of urban life are only the texts that you can read so well in naked bodies.
(Nurul Hayat)
In the context of urban life, the question of identity is absolutely necessary for interaction between people. Through his works, Acil was trying to criticize a misunderstanding when the stress of identity itself relies solely on advertising, lifestyle or trend. He wanted to 'expose' the bodies that rely on that nonsense. Even in the extreme, he 'removed' all the attributes of beauty or handsomeness by removing the hair on the heads of his figures.
Creative Process Background
A YOUNG MAN ran into the crowd fighting to get in a city bus crowded with people. His relatively small body got caught in the door before it finally succeeded in breaking into the middle of the crowd. People were squeezed in around him. One-two people are talking, but most were silent, hardly greeted each other.
Out there, the ads on large standing billboards were seen at the crossroad of many roads. There were giant televisions and dull banners, some of which appear to be torn. Buildings were reaching into the sky. And further, he saw the dazed people stopping at the bus stops. People were fighting over something. People were chasing each other. And people swarmed down to either doing nothing. That is how he went through the day-to-day life in the city from 1999 to mid 2006.
Time blows quickly and unconsciously the living experience for nearly seven years in the city left a deep impression in the minds of Nurul Hayat, a young artist whom by his colleagues is often called Acil. The frozen faces without expression that he found when traveling by bus or electric train suddenly appeared back in all his paintings. So it is with the people who are huddled and high-rise buildings with a complex winding layout, which are always equipped with emergency stairs.
Nurul Hayat (Acil) was born in Tasikmalaya, West Java, on 6 September 1972. An alumnus of Sarjanawiyata Tamansiswa University, he is going through post-graduate education at the Indonesian Arts Institute (Institut Seni Indonesia) Yogyakarta majoring in Art Creation. He now lives in Perum Sewon Asri, Bantul, Yogyakarta together with colleagues.
Acil is a unique and multitalented artist. In addition to drawing, installation and painting, he enjoys composing songs. His collection of songs has reached tens or even hundreds of titles. He explores different types of music from ballads to reggae. His musical activities got a boost from when he was still joining Suwung studio Yogyakarta and continue even when he travels. Music is his greatest weapon to kill his boredom that often strangles him during his stay in Jakarta.
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| PERINGKAT, 2010 |
In addition to painting, tri-dimensional works is a new activity that he is now engaged with no less seriousness. Acil deliberately chooses newspaper, as the media of his tri-dimensional works for its ecological reasons as well as it is readily available and so easily transmitted to others. His tri-dimensional works have been exhibited at the Taman Budaya Yogyakarta and reviewed by the Kompas newspaper (the Friday edition, October 29, 2010), Kedaulatan Rakyat (the Sunday edition, October 31, 2010) and Tempo (the Monday edition, November 1, 2010).
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| MEMBABI BUTA, 2010 |
The Framework of Thought and The Search Phase of Two-dimensional Works
Many years of contact with the environment, human characteristic and social problems of the city itself is the inspiration for Acil. Almost every day he saw people from different backgrounds doing their respective activities in order to realize their dreams and goals. For Acil, all that a man does is an attempt to establish his existence. It has been that the nature of human desire is always to be recognized in the middle of his society.
In that framework, the nature of competition is something natural. And is it not that competition in a variety of reasons and forms always present in our midst? This is not surprising considering that nature of human beings is always the desire to be the premier. But then the question arises, what is the essence of competition between the men?
To answer the question above, Acil deliberately quoted Friedrich Wilhelm Nietsche’s philosophy of human existence; "In inter-human relationships that have grown there are great human beings, ueber-Mensch, superman, that they can overcome the strength of the group of people in mass. That should be the goal of human life is embodying great human beings who are stronger, smarter and more daring ".
So it is only natural that a bunch of masculine bodies, naked, colorful bald heads, with flat facial features, often appear in Acil’s fine works. They are always in chasing, jumping, embracing or reaching 'something' poses. Acil has a view that the essence of artistic professional attitude is absorbing environmental phenomena and then communicating them. So he chooses the way of narrative communication just like a novel or comic book storyline that has elements in it, where there will always be leaders who represent a certain character. But in this case, Acil tells us all just by drawing a single frame.
Personality is an important element in a story, not to mention great ideas about human nature that Acil tried to narrate through his works. He adopted the stereotype Si Polan as the figure in his works. Si Polan is a figure without identity (noname) who is perfect and perfectly follows the lack of benefits as men. As we all know that the name itself is often associated with the yellow book of the students to represent ‘the who’ in religious cases ─ frequently found in books that discuss the field of Shariah.
The name of the stereotype Si Polan has different versions in other countries, for example, in Arabic it is called Fulan, the Americans call him John Doe, the Chinese call him Thio Sam, he is called Ah Beng in Singapore and the Portuguese people call him Fulana. Now, Acil described Si Polan as a bald-headed man (colorful) with one tone body-color, because body movement is a shadow (wayangan; one colour tone). The body is simply the tools of the brain in the head. Without a head, the body would have no identity. And of course, different heads have different ways of thinking (contents of mind).
Therefore, the biggest 'goal' to be achieved by a man in his life was often translated as 'perfect man'. Just as the works of the series "Nine Spirit" that were made during the year 1999, Acil described the glorious achievement by the symbol digit '9 '. The interpretation of the symbol will not be discussed here, but basically Acil wanted to stress out that the competition between people to achieve superiority will end in a noble purpose (the highest), which is dimensional (multilevel) ─ the circumstances of one situation will not be equal of the other situations, or one subject to another.
In another point of view, WT Stace in his book The Concept of Morals confirmed that something that is said to have existence is when it is public. That is, the existence of something should be 'seen' and 'experienced' by many people.
It is a valuable experience when standing on the bus or the city of Jakarta-Bogor electric train, he saw people standing or sitting so close to each other but they do not greet each other. They do not know the background of each other, name, address, education and so forth. For Acil, the people in front of him ' do not exist' because he does not know their identity, nor the person in front of Acil. And so forth. All people mutually negate their existence.
In the context of urban life, the question of identity is absolutely necessary for interaction between people. Through his works, Acil was trying to criticize a misunderstanding when the stress of identity itself relies solely on advertising, lifestyle or trend. He wanted to 'expose' the bodies that rely on that nonsense. Even in the extreme, he 'removed' all the attributes of beauty or handsomeness by removing the hair on the heads of his figures.
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| WHERE AM I Mixed media on canvas, 120 x 150 cm, 2010 |
He tries to answer the symbolization of the urban life phenomenon by putting the areas of building complete with their stairs. At first, he found the stress of urban life phenomena in the areas of the building, but when the process of his thinking continued to evolve, it is found that it is the text that actually forms the context (urban phenomenon).
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| MANY WAYS TO NINE Acrylic on canvas, 140 x 200 cm, 2009 |
When confronted with the distance, the text reflects the reality in the minds of men that often even reproduces itself into new meanings. Acil seems to understand this phenomenon in which the framework of visual semiotics he 'flipped' the text to be an element of artistic (encourage) to his works, which was interleaved with carefulness and accuracy.
The recent facts of the communication revolution era - by the visual, are represented by newspaper sheets. We cannot deny that the newspaper is the product of urban life. But then naturally it bounced and turned into the most dominant agent in shaping the patterns of lifestyle and self-image of the urban society itself. The relationship of both is clearly manifested by gadget ads, good services, clothing, accessories, beauty, and others.
Departing from that idea, Acil decided to change into a collage-painting technique by placing a newspaper collage on the areas of his two-dimensional works. This decision is fundamentally important to maintain a strong connectivity between the aesthetics language (visual media) with the discourse initiated.
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| REDIRECTION Mixed media on canvas, 145 x 220 cm, 2011 |
The inevitability of fine art today is that it will continue to grow and continues to find its shape. Hence, the artist is expected to continue to explore options in terms of aesthetic language and thinking pattern, which are the background to the birth of his works.
In this case, Acil is special as a professional artist. Although he is still new but he is a hard worker and learner, as evidenced by his growing ideas in line with his passion to continue foster his creativity and rejection to be limited by the media and dimensions alone. We are all waiting for Acil’s next creative exploration.
Yogyakarta, Desember 2010
DEDI YUNIARTO
DEDI YUNIARTO
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