13.02.25 — 12.03.25

 

Fragmen

 

Solo exhibition by Agus Suwage

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FRAGMENTS OF SUWAGE

In the age of nearing 66 years old—with the health, welfare, and the life wisdom of today—the figure of Agus Suwage echoes the words of the artist Masuji Ono from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, An Artist of the Floating World (1986):

“A deep happiness that comes from the belief that one's struggles have been recognised; that one's hard work has paid off, one's doubts have been erased, everything becomes worth it and valuable; that one has achieved something of value and received acknowledgement.”

Friday morning, January 17th—after making an appointment a week prior—I met Agus Suwage in Studio Biru, his two-storey art studio in Jalan Ngadinegaran, Mantrijeron, Yogyakarta.

That morning, he looked fresh after he went solo cycling three hours earlier around Bangunjiwo, Bantul. Usually he went cycling with 2–3 of his friends, like Heri Pemad, Iwan Yusuf, and Samsul Arifin. One morning I even saw him cycling with Heri Pemad and Biantoro Santoso, the owner of Nadi Gallery. From what I heard, this group cycling habit has been going on for the last five years, at least. Thus, I was not surprised when I saw 5–7 bicycles of various types and brands parked in Studio Biru’s first floor.

Perhaps this is the reason—along with one or two health- related reasons—that caused Agus Suwage to stop smoking. One thing for sure, the artist who was born in Purworejo, Central Java, 14 April 1959, told me that in the last three years he has quit smoking—as well as avoiding alcohol as much as he could. So, I smoked alone during the three hours conversation we had that morning. Meanwhile, I observed that Agus Suwage alternated between sucking on (three) candies and drinking (two glasses of) water.

Cigarette and alcohol—although have been removed and avoided in the daily live of Agus Suwage—will forever stay in his curriculum vitae, an artist who graduated from the Graphic Design Department at Faculty of Fine Arts and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology, Bandung.

We recall, for instance, the site-specific artwork, Aku Ingin Hidup Seribu Tahun Lagi (2007), depicting the portrait of 28 figures in politic, art, literature, film, music, and philosophy, national and international—among them are Bruce Lee, Fidel Castro, Kartini, and Frida Kahlo—with the signature pose of poet Chairil Anwar when he smokes: two fingers holding the cigarette to the lips. Along with the watercolor painting on paper, a becak tricycle was parked, with a glass box on it that is filled with cigarette butts—who knows how many.

We also remembers, for instance, the object-installation, Monumen yang Menjaga Hankamnas (2012), consisting of tens of big green beer bottles lit with lamps; the acrylic painting Holy Beer dan Kawan-kawan (2003), depicting portraits of five men—three of them were clear imageries of Agus Suwage—in five different poses, expressions and moments: one of them depicting a bare-chested skinny man standing inside—or seemingly appearing from—a transparent beer glass with sticker of cross and crescent moon; there was fire clinging on the glass rim and the man’s shoulder; and there was fire lit from the head of the man.

Do you want to know the shape of this fire? Check the oil painting The Rain Song (2024) in this Fragmen exhibition. The fire that burns and consumes the stern of an empty lifeboat in the painting can be ensured to be similar to the fire clinging to the glass rim and the left shoulder of the man and the burning fire on the bald head of the man in Holy Beer dan Kawan-kawan.

If you’re wondering what is the “meaning” of the similarity of fire in both paintings, I would say: that is the visual fragment or symbol that is, borrowing a line from Amir Hamzah’s poem, “bertukar tangkap dengan lepas” (freely exchanging) between the two images of different medium and timeline. Therefore, I could also answer that the fire in The Rain Song is an excerpt from the fire in Holy Beer dan Kawan-kawan—it might have come from some of Agus Suwage’s other paintings and drawings prior to the Holy Beer dan Kawan-kawan.

Based on those two answers—if you observe carefully and leisurely—The Rain Song is undoubtedly a painting created from several excerpts. Apart from the appearance of fire that Agus Suwage quoted from his other works, it is good to know that the appearance of rain scribed in The Rain Song is quoted from the appearance of rain in the graphic or woodcut works of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), specifically Karasaki no yau—Evening rain at Karasaki (circa 1804 to 1818).

“While Van Gogh loved and was inspired by Hokusai’s waves (The Great Wave off Kanagawa), I prefer the rain,” Agus Suwage explained.

Another quote in The Rain Song that need to be stated here is that the title of the painting—as inscribed on the right upper part of the linen—comes from Led Zeppelin’s song in the album Houses of the Holy (1973). Understandably, in Yogyakarta art scene, Agus Suwage is known as a visual artist who loves music and is pretty good at playing the guitar. If you visit Studio Biru’s 2nd floor these days, you will surely find a set of musical instruments, some guitars, and books about music and world musicians.

***

Some time around 2018, the author-poet-visual artist Goenawan Mohamad said:

“Art is not a mimetic process, as stated by the old school of thought since Aristotle. Art is a metamorphosis. Or an unexpected combination of the two. There is no repetition, what exists is the ‘difference’ that is captured in repetition. And things, animate and inanimate, are reborn.”

Therefore, I must admit I gain additional enlightenment in enjoying the charcoal and acrylic drawing on paper, Perjalanan ke Timur (2025). At a glimpse, the drawing seems to be a repetition—especially on the image of lifeboat and the landscape of lake or river or beach line with hills or islands stretched in the horizon—of The Rain Song. After a closer inspection—they are different. The lifeboat in Perjalanan ke Timur has two paddles—an important steering equipment that doesn’t exist in The Rain Song. It could be said that the lifeboats in the two paintings are similar but not the same.

“I took the image of the lifeboat from an anonymous source on the internet,” said Agus Suwage.

What Agus Suwage does not tell me—probably because I did not ask about it in our conversation in Studio Biru— is that the title, Perjalanan ke Timur (Journey to the East), is similar to the title of Herman Hesse’s novel, Journey to the East, first published in 1956 in English, a translation from the original German title Die Morgenlandfahrt, published in 1932.

Beyond this, recalling the Journey to the East storyline (I read it in the Indonesian translation published by Tirai, Yogyakarta, 2004), and linked it to the visual subject matter in the image of Perjalanan ke Timur, I saw there is a kinship of imagination between the Herman Hesse’s novel and Agus Suwage’s drawing.

In my opinion, the drawing sucessfully depicts the main idea of the allegorical novel about the odyssey of “I” in search of the ultimate truth across time and space of the consciousness that eludes the body.

Nonetheless, as Agus Suwage admitted, using charchoal to create a drawing sized 208 x 294 centimeters on top of dozens of pieces of paper requires big energy, meticulous details, and stubborn love. It's a sort of sacrifice to save life from death, like the rain showering the burning lifeboat in The Rain Song and the “I” in Journey to the East and the peeling figure in Perjalanan ke Timur.

And charcoal eventually becomes glorious in Agus Suwage's eyes.

“Charcoal is my favorite medium in creating art, my firstborn was named after it,” Agus Suwage shared.

He also expressed the same adoration to the painter Frida Kahlo’s “will to live” that is filled with wounds and venoms in the oil painting on linen, Gugur (2020), which was an excerpt in another dimension from the silver, resin, and oil paint sculpture, Vox Mortis Vox Orbis (2009).

Similarly, for the incredible creativity of the artist Olafur Eliasson—especially for his outdoor installation work, Waterfall (2004). Agus Suwage quoted Waterfall and assembled it along Basuki Abdullah’s oil painting, Joko Tarub (1959), Edouard Manet’s oil painting, Dejeuner sur I’Herbe (1863), and his self-portrait from a source I could not trace back, to create the oil painting in linen, Plesiran (2024).

On quoting his own artwork for—according to Agus Suwage’s own term—revitalizing “the old” into “the new” with different medium and technique, he did this in two printings made from acrylic paint on canvas, the Super Chimpanzee (2024) and I Lick Therefore I am (2025). Different from its reference, Agus Suwage called both paintings as a photograph cliché, or the “negative” side of the image.

Same thing could be said for the oil painting on linen, the diptych Hallelujah (2020). Like I Lick Therefore I am, Super Chimpanzee, Plesiran, and Gugur—Hallelujah was born from rough strokes and scrapes that enabled the painter to be submissive to the surprises or unexpectedness in his creative process to accept the life and death of his artworks as something that is expected to be amazing.

Thus, one day Agus Suwage looked at the skeleton object that had been hung on the ceilings of Studio Biru for years with an incomprehensible sense of gratitude. This was because in the gaping mouth of the skeleton now resides a family of sparrows. The inanimate object is now a home for animals out of the blue.

This reality evoked Agus Suwage’s discernment on everything in the Studio Biru environment. Hallelujah was created as a visual documentation of all the items and the interior of Studio Biru.

With about the same attitude, revitalizing old artworks, that have been presented before in an exposition, as a fragment of the yet existing—Agus Suwage reassembled the ceramic object of a head painted with flowers from 2010 with a stove top oven from 2025 which was given lightings and became a new work titled Asu Celeng.

***

One day, circa 1996, Larry Smolucha of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago stated:

“As the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss has pointed out, the primitive artist and myth maker have a good deal in common with what the French call a bricoleur, a handyman or jack-of-all-trades who improvises his tools on the spot, combining cast-off objects into devices intended to be used only once, then thrown away. In a similar fashion, the artist culls what he or she needs from the reservoir provided by the culture, borrowing inspiration from other artists, picture books, travel posters, catalogs, and the world-at-large.”

That's how, all artworks in this Fragmen exhibition —especially the eight artworks I described above—make Agus Suwage deserves to be called a leading bricoleur in the world of Indonesian contemporary art.

For these reasons, let's look at the rest of Larry Smolucha's words above, as expressed below:

“Artists modify all these things, transforming and combining them through a sort of visual language that they did not invent and may not, in some cases, even fully comprehend. But from these odds and ends the artists manage to produce a New Thing that is partly a product of all the inherited cultural material that has been left to them by posterity.”

To conclude, I want you to believe that Larry Smolucha’s words is a good overview of what I had said about the artistic pillars—forms, techniques, ideas—of the eight artworks of Agus Suwage in this Fragmen exhibition.

Jakarta, 13 February 2025
WAHYUDIN