17.04.25 — 16.04.25

Pronoid

Solo exhibition by Taufik Ermas

COMPREHENDING TAUFIK ERMAS AND HIS MIND

When I first visited Taufik Ermas’ studio, which is also his home, I was amazed by his garden. Although simple, it was beautiful with the variety of plants growing in it. Most of the plants were well-maintained and neatly arranged. Some were put in assorted hanging pots, while some were displayed on a special shelf attached to the front wall of the house. Because of the numbers, most of the windows became covered by the leaves. Some were lined up on the floor and arranged in pots with various sizes.

If we sat at the terrace of his house and looked outside, we would see a small pond on the left side of the garden. On the right corner, right beside us, a bird cage was installed by joining one of the wall sidings to the other part of the wall, not too big in size, I think it was only 40 cm wide and 40 cm long and the height was based on the height of the wall.

Three zebra doves were flying inside the cage and occasionally perched on the branches installed inside the cage. The sound of their wings flapping created a natural ambience.

At the south of Jogja, in a fairly dense residential area, the atmosphere in the garden of Taufik Ermas' house—with its variety of plants, the tiny pond, and the bird cage—felt quite calm and comfortable. One can see, by the condition of the well-maintained plants, everything was well-kept due to Taufik’s diligence in nurturing the growth and cultivating the existing. I feel that this is important to be conveyed, because the same diligence can be sensed in his artistic practice that tends to be tidy and serious.

When we entered his studio, a place where the various shaped paintings are worked on, the things in the studio were also neatly organized, everything seemed to have its own place. There were no clutters, no paint splatters on the floor as we commonly see in a painting studio. The walls of the room were filled with paintings that are still in the process of production for this solo exhibition. I was wondering, Taufik Ermas might not be the type of emotional or expressive artist who emphasizes the release of turbulent feelings in his work, but perhaps the opposite. An artist with a clear work plan, with patterns and various plans. I later realized that this was not entirely true.

After having a conversation with him, regarding his artistic practice and ideas, it felt like the ability to organize and keep everything in its place began to fade. Taufik Ermas’ mind is quite complex. To understand him, I think I would need to equip myself with a lot of knowledge, not just in the subject of art. I need to learn a bit about philosophy and history in general. Quite often I had to trace back the reading material he mentioned.

In his not so simple mind, there are many things stirring and overlapping with one another. Sometimes his mind is influenced by metaphysic ideas, sometimes it is triggered to reflect on the development of technology and its impacts to everyday life, sometimes he gets lost in human problems and their alienation, sometimes his mind wanders far, fantasizing about space and its limits. All the events that he remembers and places he once visited are interconnected in separate time dimensions. All his experiences and people who interacted with him, people from various backgrounds, are sometimes present as a reason for his artistic endeavors, some of which become the subject of his paintings.

Aside from being influenced by many things, Taufik Ermas also often questions many things and tests out various things. With the artistic work that he undertakes, all the complexities are to be presented in any way possible, through some form, or shape, or something else.

In the last 15 years or perhaps even more, Taufik’s works are characterized with structural unconventionality. This is obviously visible in his works. In the painting that Taufik Ermas usually works on, for instance, we could see there are parts that are omitted or look like they were cut out and discarded completely. By adding some kind of construction on the spanram, the painting, which is no longer intact, remains as sturdy as any other painting. Some properties prevalent in painting materials are retained. Such as the surface plasticity is maintained so as not to lose the true sense of painting. The visual image on the remaining canvas surface is still formed in a traditional way. It is painted with brush and paint as it is commonly done. Taufik usually utilizes acrylic paint, the choice was based on technicality and practicality.

In some of the other works, texture is added, but in a quite complicated way because the texture on the canvas surface is not created by adding supporting materials, it is formed from the accentuated and stiffened canvas. Taufik called this technique acrylic on a single sheet embossed canvas. As if it is not enough to simply add and subtract or remove something from the surface of the canvas, recently Taufik Ermas also tried to combine several parts into a unity, it is noteworthy that the canvases that are put together have different patterns that complement each other.

When observing the process of his work, it becomes clear that the technical matters and materials used by Taufik are not random, it is done carefully and meticulously. Whereas the contents of his works, those related to the ideas and how his work is to be understood until it becomes meaningful, we as the audience also required a different discernment to interpret them.

In this curatorial note, I attempt to read Taufik Ermas’ artworks by categorizing them into several tendencies, trying to understand the ideas, and fathoming the potentials they might contain. Finally, I will share the interconnectedness to explain their relevance to the theme of Pronoid, a theme chosen by Taufik Ermas himself, for a simple reason.

Existence that is disembodied/no longer present “Exists” in another way.

When we are presented with the works of Taufik Ermas— especially those with the modified canvas technique—the established conceptions in my mind, about various things and of course also about paintings, are disturbed. Many questions arise, one of them is, “Is it possible for something that does not exist to be a marker for existence?”

Taufik Ermas’ paintings present in an unconventional way. The paintings are not complete, with parts deliberately cut-out or removed. The consequence of this unconventionality is the emergence of volume as a form that disrupts the surface of the two-dimensional canvas. However, the painting techniques that he used are the same as conventional techniques in some aspects and the installation is the same as a normal painting, which can only be seen from one side. Nevertheless, the inward and outward protruding parts, several centimeters thick, radically detach the painting from its two-dimensional nature and almost bring it into the realm of three-dimensionality.

This unusual form certainly exists due to certain reasons. It is an attempt to—if it cannot be answered absolutely—at least present a response to the philosophical question of ‘nothingness’, a concept that has long been debated in philosophy. Parmenides, the pre-Socrates classical Greek philosopher, assumes that there is no such thing as nothingness. If nothingness does not exist, there is no such thing as empty space. This leaves only one alternative, which is simply “what is present”—an existence. The trivial philosophical question, paradoxical, and nearly impossible to be imagined, let alone to be realized visually. However, for Taufik Ermas, no matter how complex the topic, it needs to be addressed because it becomes the foundation of his artistic work that he develops into a series of issues of how painting as a work of art is perceived and interpreted in a contemporary context.

This effort to visualize nothingness created its own paradox. On one hand, the work is present physically, it is visible and tactile. Yet on the other hand, it is the part that is removed or modified that becomes the focal point, triggering questions about existence and non-existence, about the visible and the hidden.

There are 21 paintings created with the cut-out painting and modified canvas techniques, removing the main object or creating cavities or grooves on the surface of the canvases, which to me is more elegant to be referred to as presenting nothingness in a different way.

There are various ways the visual elements are managed in this solo exhibition’s works. In several paintings, there are missing parts or holes in some of the canvas surface that follow the shape of the object, which is usually the main object. Some others appear pattern-like, serving as distractions to the visual imagery on the remainder of the canvas. The presence of the holes disguises and distorts the visual images on the canvas surface.

From some of these tendencies, we can say that each pattern and style have a different way to be interpreted. The painting titled Night Walker depicts human issues and their alienation. Alienation from the space they live in, from the images that shape them, or from what has been involuntarily attached to them. Meanwhile, the painting with the visualization of various types of cloud (Sky Locked #1, Sky Locked #2, Sky Locked #3) can be considered as a symbol of the absolute, as if all the answers are behind the clouds, beyond the limits of the perceived sky. And then in the painting titled Rain Cut, we can assume that ambience conditioning is the ultimate goal. The landscape drawing is obscured by the massive cut-outs in the form of line and dot patterns, as if the cut-outs were a metaphor for raindrops. Despite not resembling the real form, it brought a little of the characteristic when it obscured the background image it covers.

What they all have in common is that, as I stated earlier, the removed parts remain the main marker of the painting. This in itself is also both questions and answers about the ontology of art, about how art materializes.

The possibilities that arise from these artworks’ presence are where artworks and their audiences complement one another in the process of producing value or meaning. Without any artwork to be perceived, it would be impossible to come up with a valuation or what we consider as the process of making meaning. The existing value or meaning no longer fully depends on the physical aspect of the artwork. The audiences have their freedom, because form is not completely the main key, because part of it has been removed, the authority that might be attached to it also disappeared.

However, to observe the significance of Taufik Ermas’ works in the contemporary visual art discourse, this kind of paradox is important to be considered.

Those Rising and Falling, Borders that Are Emphasized and Diminished.

There are five black and white oval shaped paintings. The frames are like those of classic paintings with engraved motifs. These five paintings put the figure of a small girl as their subject with different situations and conditions. These paintings are monochrome, with black and white color. With his skill in chiaroscuro, Taufik Ermas made the realist painting feel more fitting and appropriate. There is a motif of broken wire fences on the surface of the paintings, formed by the texture. With special treatment and techniques, as I have stated before, the canvas is shaped in accordance with the planned patterns and then made stiff. The emerging shapes are like traces of wound, like keloids. With this painting, Taufik wishes to tell the story about the past and the traces left behind.

As an example, one of the paintings with the figure of a child playing hopscotch, a game popular in the 80’s and 90’s, and is scarcely seen now. The image perspective is as if the audience are looking from above. The broken wire fence is symbolized as a boundary, despite being broken it is not completely gone. Thus the ideal past is frozen in time and space that have been separated to the present.

In the painting titled Bias Identitas #2, the main object that is usually removed is not completely gone, but also it is not whole as a unit. The figure in the painting with the background of books piled fully in a shelf seems to be the main object, or even if not, it is quite eye-catching. The figure is shaped by the lines caused by the indentations. Upon observation, the object with the human shaped silhouette standing sideways is almost separated from what is probably the background. In this stage, Taufik still thinks that the visual materialized in his painting works are still a symbol. The difference is that when the materialized visual is not shaped by image illusion but through manipulation of the surface texture, it has its own power to trigger the senses. The painting that was once normal like any other paintings feels like being inscribed to leave an impression, and this impression is a trace that is real, felt, and palpable. Lines formed due to illusion are no longer entirely illusory because they are formed from real structures. Thus the idea of camouflage, blurring of boundaries, existence and non-existence gains a language which for Taufik Ermas is enough to be a strong representation.

The interpretation could be taken to a positive or even a negative value. It can be a critic and contemplation, it can be a critic of censorship yet at the same time it has the potential to be quite the opposite, displaying the essence and the substance. The markers of presence are removed but the boundaries are emphasized, the people are nameless but distinctive. Just consider the visual of a book has the potential to symbolize something like intellectuality and anything related to what we have understood as knowledge, now it becomes the background and the main object simultaneously, human as a being whose existence is made to depend on the image of the book. Existence here no longer depends on who the person is, but more to what is within them and what knowledge that shapes them.

Of course this is just one of the interpretations that is still open for further development. If we may conclude, it can be said that ‘damaging’ the canvas structure, by adding, reducing, or maybe combining one another, for Taufik is a deliberate attempt to present something that is no longer whole. What is incomplete is expected to trigger a dialogue, a dialogue between the audience and the work, a balanced and equal dialogue, so that meaning can be presented, emerge, and be felt. In addition, the incomplete is expected to provide freedom to the audience to construct the meaning they desire, tailored to the needs of the audience themselves based on their understanding, experiences, or feelings.

The sculpture titled The Averoes can be considered as the end of Taufik’s statement in this solo exhibition. During the sculpture creation, the methods in medium selection and implementation are nearly similar to the other works, they tend to be circumvented and conditioned. The chosen materials can be considered unusual compared to the other sculpture in general, which is cardboard stacked until thick, shaped, hardened with resin, and then coated with wood fibers. Despite this, the most important thing is these materials can and have realized the shapes he desires. A staircase that has lost its integrity. At the bottom part, a structure resembling the human foot is added. The addition is necessary to solidify the presence of sculpture as a metaphor.

The staircase symbolizes the connection between the world above and the world below, but in a condition that has been retired from its function. If we were to agree on the metaphors that Taufik Ermas used, we can draw a conclusion that the intermediaries needed to achieve the goals that exist above the surface are no longer there. All that is left is imagination and thought. That is why the opportunity to get to what we consider as the absolute could only be formed when the body, mind, imagination, heart, and feelings are utilized, optimized, and maximized.

Choosing Pronoid as the Theme

Pronoid is the positive counterpart of paranoid. In sychological studies, pronoia is a symptom that is as equally problematic as paranoia. Psychologist Fred Goldner, in the journal Social Problem in 1980, defined pronoid as a delusion that people thought positively towards others. A person's actions are considered well-accepted and praised by others, and when they speak behind someone's back, they are always saying good things, not bad. Casual acquaintances are often regarded as close friends. Politeness and small talk are interpreted as expressions of deep attachment and promises of future support. Meanwhile, in a journal discussing Goldner's thoughts titled Paranoia and Pronia: The Visionary and The Banal, written by Laurence J. Kirmayer in 1983, it is stated that pronoia is an individual and social psychopathology.

However, Laurence J. Kirmayer also believes that, in its mildest form, pronoia or pronoid resembles healthy optimism—full of hope and confidence in seeing things.

When this pronoid can be interpreted as a positive symptom, it is at that moment that Taufik Ermas seizes the opportunity to choose the word ‘Pronoid’ as the theme of his solo exhibition. This positive symptom, although the opportunity to bring it forward may be small, can serve as a bridge to 'wisdom'. In this context, Taufik Ermas' works are positioned to spark a sense of optimism.

Eka Novrian