Sunday, November 02, 2008

Self Portrait, Portraits Ourselves


A portrait can really talk much regardless the medium, whether painting, sculpture or photography. At present photography has become a popular medium for people to disseminate their self-expression. People can independently share and get feedbacks concerning their self-portraits through online media. These are the faces and discourse of self-portrait of today. Private domains become so thin that public can easily access them. Therefore, we can find out at least how the “faces”, identities, social issues and development of people’s mindsets really are.

Reading Mikke Susanto’s curatorial note for the exhibition entitled ‘Self Portrait : Famous Living Artists of Indonesia’ at Jogja Gallery can give a depiction of the long journey of the history of self-portrait art, from the civilization of ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, Renaissance era to modern era as what is happening in Indonesia and what will end in this exhibition. It is a visual art exhibition that puts forward self-portraits of the famous artists of this country. We can enjoy this exhibition from 7 to 30 November 2008.

Jogja Gallery as a space for displaying and appreciating contemporary artworks of our artists tries to accommodate the issues as mentions above. With the artworks of 32 participating artists, this exhibition shows their explorations of discourses and media in relation to themselves as the objects. The emphasized word ‘famous’ reminds us of the comparison of the fluctuating polemics developing between self-portraits of well-known and not well-known persons.

Approaching the end of 2008, through this exhibition Jogja Gallery would like to invite public to do self-introspection with their own portraits. We are about to enter the gate into national culture of 2009 with fresher and more challenging hope, dream, spirit and struggle.

We would like to express our appreciation and gratitude to all artists participating in this exhibition with their inspiring works. Also we would like to thank to everyone, our partners, sponsors and print and electronic media who have been supporting Jogja Gallery all this time.

Have a nice exploration!

Bambang Soekmonohadi
Member of Supervisors Board of Jogja Gallery

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