“ I sing to the music that comes from the madness of the heart ” – Soundgarden

source: highlike

Work: Human birds are figures that have been raised by Arya Pandjalu in his series for over 5 years. Arya’s desire to make the human bird as his “alter-ego” is part to dig back memories of the past and give it a context that is relevant to today. Human bird does not only represent ideas about the relation of man and animal, which is one of the popular subjects in art history that has been endlessly explored, but also, in the context of the idea of Aryan Pandjalu, is a way to personify himself with the other. The idea of human bird approached Arya when he recalled a time in his young age. At that time, about the early years of the 1980s, he lived in an area that is quite green, almost like a forest, in Bandung. He enjoyed the little adventures that he got from tracking bushes and paths. He also interacted with wild animals and birds flying noisy there. Until finally, Arya was taught to use a pellet gun and hunting birds off sky. As a child of nearly mature, it had been very enjoyable hunting experience for Arya. Almost every day he practiced his skills using a pellet gun and then took home the birds that were already dead. I think the activity of hunting animals at that time was a way of asserting male ritual of adulthood, an introduction to the values of masculinity and desire for adventure. This is the same as the introduction to the “common’ activity of men to do; tinkering with car/motorbike engines, or carpentry work. A social construction that has been implanted in such a long time about what a man should and should not do. After hundreds of birds fell to the ground from his shots, and some seemed to die in vain because could no longer be consumed, Arya began to feel he did not want to hunt birds. His passion for adventure had turned to other things. Arya has kept his love and hate relationship with these birds in the drawer of his memory for so long. Occasionally he opened the drawer, looked in it and then closed it again. Sometimes he cleaned it from dust and bumps of other events that come and go. When deciding to become an artist, Arya also venturing to try out various experiments in order to find his way of arts. This is indeed the most difficult process experienced by artists that needs the persistence to continue to seek and dare to fail. Once a time, in this tortuous process, Arya opened his drawer of memories and found the images of birds falling from the air, dying. From there, Arya then approached back his past and made it a point of departure for his arts process. Arya Pandjalu’s human bird then slowly emerged in his simultaneous exhibitions. Lately, Arya Pandjalu’s paintings also show the human bird in various styles and different approaches. Arya often combines realism with fantasy, but it does not also lead to the surrealism. Realism is displayed as a context of the human bird, to give it space in the daily reality as a place where the human bird rests. Therefore, the human bird is many times being shown doing daily activities Arya often performed as well: singing, exercising or just resting quietly In the series “Sound Garden” this time, Arya Pandjalu is still working with his human birds, creating installations that primarily use nonconcrete materials. Looking at the visualization of his work this time, we can see how Arya is interested in talking about the environment, within a framework which tends to ‘romantic’; the memory of the past over the trees and the birds chirping happily and the fairly well maintained relationship between humans, plants and animals. At the same time, this romanticism leads us to the desire to re-create such reflective spaces, in the midst of today’s fast-paced and networked in all directions society. Arya’s small space created a marker and a reminder that being close to the ‘natural’ can create a simple joy that is often forgotten and swallowed by the big dreams of modern men. If a lot of resin as material usually used to create Arya’s sculptures of human birds, now Arya experiments with materials such as waste paper fed with natural color. Wearing non-concrete material like this, Arya’s works show the hand works that feel more detailed and intimate, which lead us away for a moment from kitsch and sparkly industrialist modes. Besides bringing the romantic feelings of our relationship with nature, as the tendency of artists now when talking about nature, there is criticism of how civilization and modern life excessively exploit nature in the work of Arya Pandjalu. This criticism does not appear explicitly and verbally in the codes that are easy to read, but rather a common understanding when we pay attention to visual language in the work of Arya as a whole. One of the most prominent installation of the series of works in this exhibition is “Factory and the Lonely Tree”. Arya creates a replica of the trees and chimneys, which immediately reminds us of the smokestacks at industrial plants. Modern life has taught us to accept the industrialization as something given, so we tend to let the air we breathe contain pollution, the water we consume become turbid and contaminated. Since we see it as fairness, we tend not to get disturbed and unwilling to anticipate. Other work , “Fade-Out”, still departs from the notion of human bird adventure, stepping pace from one place to another, along with the sound of chirping birds increasingly missing from the vocabulary of our daily lives. Arya presents this chirping sound to remind us again in the situations where the sounds of nature were part of the soundscape of our lives, alongside the roar of motor vehicles and successive sound of the television box. One video in this exhibition, “Bird Song” also shows the human birds that roam the landscape of everyday reality. Arya’s wearing a bird mask and moving gesture imitating the bird while carrying a rifle on his shoulder. This video shows the juxtaposition of human bird surrealism and reality of life in a simple way, but still left the impression of poetic and effective. From idea to bring sounds, Arya also cultivate a close relationship with sound and musicality through the installation “Sound Garden #1”. This work is showing five guitars completely connected with amplifier around which birds made of paper will be put. Besides being active in the art world, Arya also known as a musician, so this installation is also showing him in his other identity. This work also visually juxtapose different codes, with guitar cables that tend to impress the industrial, while the birds are made from waste paper that displays shades of naturalists. The juxtaposition of two opposing codes is interesting to describe the situation of present-day humans who do tend to be ambiguous towards nature. A series of drawings in this exhibition work also illustrates the strong Arya’s identity as a musician, in which music playing activity is part of his daily life, and part of his way of telling stories he composed, with a personal expression that reflects the ideas in his universe of life. Recently, the idea to talk about the environment appeared sporadically among artists, mainly refers to the nature of urgency due to the increasing number of “natural disaster” caused by human carelessness in treating the nature. Because of the closeness to the ‘mainstream’, these days, the possibility for artists to get trapped into discussing this issue with the normative tendencies and cliche becomes very large. Arya Pandjalu seems aware of the trap, and therefore he breaks away from the effort to connect these issues with large contexts beyond his competence. Instead, he chose to talk about personal things, about fair and everyday relationships between man and nature, about the memories of feeling close to what we once knew as a natural: the sound of birds chirping, the smell of the soil after rain, the rush of rain and river water, and so on. Arya explores the human figures of birds, his alter ego, as a recorder and registrar of all such minor natural phenomena. Visually, the works of Arya Pandjalu in “Sound Garden” did show a shift in material matter, they become more minimalist and show a stronger sense of craftsmanship than the works of earlier periods. The use of paper as the main material in contemporary art often displays the tension between fine arts and craft. Work materials and techniques commonly used in handicrafts, such as paper, becomes a form of installation that underlines the power of narrative, as the approach used by Arya, apparently managed to make the juxtaposition become more unified. Arya did challenge himself to use craft materials to be able to express ideas more radically, and not only grounded in narrative. He himself did not attempt to avoid the impression of ‘craft’ in his works made of paper, where he believes that contemporary art itself with all candors allows the craft to be an integral part in it. Rather than see it as a collage technique and visual code, Arya displays craft technique to underline the intimate relationship between the artist and the work he produces, with a genuine and honest form. In contemporary art in recent years, the use of materials which have the possibility to trap artists to display craft tends to be avoided. Let’s just say ceramic, paper, textiles artists all painstakingly digging techniques and complex visual display to align themselves with the definition of contemporary art. Not many artists managed to overcome this. Referring to the map of world art, perhaps it’s Japan and Indian contemporary art that simply could display artists with artistic approach successfully break through the line between craft and fine arts. For Arya, the desire to complicate techniques or visual display to get their contemporary predicate becomes irrelevant, precisely because in the presentrestrictions should be undisputed objects are made of paper and coated with resin inside to make it stronger, so that the texture of the paper itself appears to be quite prominent. The colors of these objects also tend to be minimalist and natural, emphasize more the problems of nature that are being discussed by Arya. The complete guitar installation with cable that appeared scattered is perhaps the most complicated and sophisticated shows Arya contiguity with cutting edge visual ideas of contemporary art. Instead of standing as individual works, each in the whole installation objects of Arya’s is part of a big orchestration that hums memories of humans and the surrounding environment. The whole works become the elements and players that present the fragments of narrative shouted one another. The simplicity of form combined with the power of narrative that Arya displayed in the “Sound Garden” exhibition this time is a power that rests on the ability of artists to be honest on what he wanted to deliver and far from the pretension to discuss this work with frills “big context” that far out of reach. The political context of this work lies in its ability to bring back the feelings of pause and the desire for adventure into our closest environment in a different way than we have experienced and approved as part of modern civilization. Alia Swastika’ 2011.

Image: “ I sing to the music that comes from the madness of the heart ” Soundgarden ( installation ), 2011. Dimentions variable, Papier- mache (birds & figure), 5 electric guitars, amplifire, mechanics & electronics From idea to bring sounds, Arya also cultivate a close relationship with sound and musicality through the installation “Sound Garden #1”. This work is showing five guitars completely connected with amplifier around which birds made of paper will be put. Besides being active in the art world, Arya also known as a musician, so this installation is also showing him in his other identity. This work also visually juxtapose different codes, with guitar cables that tend to impress the industrial, while the birds are made from waste paper that displays shades of naturalists. The juxtaposition of two opposing codes is interesting to describe the situation of present-day humans who do tend to be ambiguous towards nature.
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source: aryapandjalu

Born : july 26 1976 in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia.
Education : 1995-2000 Print Making Department at the Indonesia Institute of the Art, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Live and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
AryaPandjalu (b. 1976, Indonesia) studied print making at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta, graduating in 2005. His work focuses on social and personal story telling through installation, print making, painting, sculpture and performance. He used to play with different medium to transfer and transform his ideas. But lately his focus is on working with paper because it is a simple and unique medium which can be found in many traditions and is above all environment friendly. For him working with paper is like going back to childhood which inspires him to making art works. He has participated in the Sama-Sama Mural Project 2003 in San Francisco, Landing Soon Residency programme at Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta in 2006, and in 2010 a residency at Kosmopolis in The Netherlands.
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source: birdprayers

Arya Pandjalu (b. 1976, Indonesia) Visual artist. Studied print making at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta, graduating in 2005. His work focuses on social and personal story telling through installation, print making, painting, sculpture and performance. In his works he plays with medium to transfer and transform his ideas.