Toys "S" Us
Solo Exhibition by Agus Suwage
July 14 - August 11, 2004
CP ARTSPACE, JAKARTA
TOYS “S” US
Question of Self-Portrait
Image of the Self
At the end, it is probably time herself that has taught Agus Suwage to listen to his heart. After finishing his formal education in 1986 in the Design Department (the studio of Graphic Design) of the Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology, Suwage needed quite a long time before he finally decided to be a professional artist. Suwage, who has a keen interest in art, has actually been involved in several art exhibitions with his artist friends since 1984. However, Agus Suwage first embarked in a professional career as a graphic designer and for ten years, worked in a firm he managed together with his friends in Jakarta. It is was only in 1996 that Suwage took the drastic decision in his life: he chose to focus on being a professional artist. This step was marked off with his first solo exhibition in the Cemeti Contemporary Art Gallery in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. So far, Suwage has had 15 solo exhibitions, in Indonesia and abroad (Japan, Australia dan Singapore).
Agus Suwage’s works are dominated by the figurative tendency, and completely engaged in the complexity of matters related to the representations of the body. From the beginning, Suwage has been consistently trying to isolate his issues: “the body is the object whose materiality we are most certain of, but the indefinable potential of that inevitably incomplete materiality remains a constant source of unease”1. In his personal and social experiences, Suwage often finds, and keeps trying to understand, myriad of problems that arise due to the tensions and the complexity of Indonesia’s multi-cultural condition; the huge gaps among the different social and economic classes; and the prospering of corruption and consuemerism in various levels of the society. Gradually, all of those problems shape his judgment and movie him away from the general belief on the representation of the ideal body in works of art. Suwage’s experiences and educational backgrounds, having their roots from outside the tradition of fine art, strengthen his doubts about the dominant perceptions that view the artist as the center of creation. Through his works, Suwage starts to pose many critical questions on the central position of the self-subject (the human being), by creating his self-portraits as an artist. For Suwage, the frame of self-portrait offers him the possibility that then steadily explores in order to examine the myth of “the subject” as a center.
So far, the theme of self-portrait becomes the dominant tendencies in Suwage’s works. The matter of self-portrait is naturally not about his own being, about Agus Suwage, nor does it become interests or through that are deeply personal. Of course, it is then important for us to be able to respect the difference between the matter of “personal identity” – as the whole signs of a person’s engagement with the realisties of his her life – and the psychoanalytic problem of identification, which opens our understanding about the self-identification process as a question of “the subject”: “What is it that a human being actually wants?” For the identification process, the identity (the subject) is not something that exists a priori, nor is it a final form; identity is merely a problematic process leading to an image of totality2. The questions on identity, then, never becomes a form of affirmation about a certain pre-given identity; nor is it ever a self-fulfilling effort about something that has been previously planned. The questions is also linked with the process and production of certain images of identity, and at the same time shows the transformation of the subject when he or she assumes the form of the image considered as a totality3. The self-subject, therefore, is never static and thorough, existing and acting as the center, but is instead ex-centric.
Suwage’self portraits can be understood as an effort toward self-mirroring, thus enabling the questions of “self” and “identity” to be continually posed. Facing the questions of “What is it that a human being actually wants?”, Suwage does not try point his finger to others. Instead, he is pointing at himself; facing the other side of himself. He has once said that “the human being, as an animal possessing intelligence, is of all this world’s creatures, the one with the greatest pontential as a predator – towards its own kind, nature and other creatures”4.
Toys’ Story
The art project of “TOYS ‘S’ US” (toys as us) is inspired by Suwage’s conversation with one of his friends, a Japanese artist who incidentally often creates works based on children’s toys5. Suwage, who is also interested in the children’s traditional games and toys of Indonesia, is reminded of his childhood – the past that gave him the feeling of security an happiness. The conversation turned into a discussion and finally triggered his awareness about how the ways the children play, and their playthings, in many cultures of the world are similar to each other. Children, wherever they are, seem to share similar joy, sadness, or balances. Suwage is certain that traditional children games, just like folklores, have been interacting with each other, from one culture to another. As we respond to the current situation of the world, amid tensions arising from the cultural differences and the shadowing of potential clashes of civilizations, we can actually find a situation of the point zero in children’s games and toys (of the world). Suwage then starts to imagine...
Suwage starts to design various functional children’s toys. However, he is not merely thinking and reminiscing about his childhood. Suwage, perhaps just like other artists or even other human beings in general, living amid the situations of the contemporary global societies, is confined by myriad of problem – socially, politically, economically, and culturally. Suwage then starts to combine the models of toys with his habit of creating works of self-portraits. One thing he keeps in mind as he is creating the works, however, is the simple and manual operational system of the toys.
“TOYS ‘S’ US” contains an effort to engineer something. Suwage seems to be building an illusive wall separating “plaything” and “playing”, exploring the puns contained in the matter of “plaything” and “playing,” and even triggering the existence of a critical position differentiating “the player” and “the audience.” As we understand the self-portrait tendencies Suwage has so far been exploring, we see that in the art project of “TOYS ‘S’ US” Suwage has actually taken a risk, putting the feelings of childhood happiness and excitement in danger of a bitter situation. In these works, the matter of identification of the “self,” “the subject,” and the “identity”, is presented in the form of interaction and experience (of the audience) in encountering the art works directly. At this point, Suwage seems to want to state a conclusion about the (human) body. He seems to touching on the statement of Elizabeth Grosz, one of the interpretes on Freud’s thoughts: “the body is, so to speak, organically/biologically/naturally ‘incomplete’; it is indeterminate, amorphous, a series of uncoordinated potentialities which require social triggering, ordering, and long term ‘administration’.”6
Over Joy
“Children say beauty; they seldom say sublime”7. When Suwage is re-interrogating his childhood memory and experience, it is not the results that make him sad. It is actually the wish and the hope to re-live the past childhood that make him sad. Is it possible that he – or someone, including us, who has become an adult or even grown old – now, owns back the times of the childhood, the joy, the happiness, the beauty? Can we now accept a “game” without prejudice? Can we still enjoy a “toy”? Can we enjoy being like our toys without worrying about being thought of as someone other than ourselves? Looking specifically at art works and expressions: Can we now enjoy beauty without the fences of self-interests?
“TOYS ‘S’ US” is not a statement supporting a cynical excuse; it is instead an option for the aim to remember the past-a politic of remembering. Don’t the past, the present, and the future form the whole chain containing an enigmatic dimension, existing as a whole and surrounding a person’s experience on beauty and happiness? All these are a matter of a sublime situation. In the sublime situation, someone’s appreciation on works of art resembles facing a gate to a space that should actually be traversed and explored alone, in silence. In the space, there exist no criteria about certain aesthetics (defining whether something is “good” or “bad,” “beautiful” or “not beautiful”). One must, therefore, walk through it alone in order to reach to a conclusion. Immanual Kant, the first philosopher to talk about the idea of the sublime situation, is certain that some aesthetic experiences about a work of art will transcend the feeling of “beauty” we encounter when we like “a beautiful, expensive car,” or “a beautiful, luxurious house.” In the true appreciation of art, Kant is sure that there is a kind of transcendent aesthetic that works universally, and one that is different from an individual sense of beauty (such as the feeling when enjoy a certain luxurious car or house). In the kind of attitude that Kant supported, aesthetic experiences will therefore be considered always as being able to support what he claimed as “value,” which are distinct from “prices”.
Agus Suwage has actually been working more often with painting; he is often pressured to create paintings. However the project of “TOYS ‘S’ US” has apparently given him a chance. The chance to take a break; simply to look back into the window of the past, hoping for something for the future, with a different attitude. The works in “TOYS ‘S’ US,” therefore, is important to be viewed as a more aggressive effort on Suwage’s part in meeting with the idea of the sublime situation. We can remember about this idea when we encounter the saying that “the feeling when faced with a work of art is no longer the feeling of pleasure, or not simply one of pleasure. It is a contradictory feeling, because it is a feeling of both pleasure and displeasure, together.”8
Bandung, March 2004
Rizki A Zaelani | curator
Jl. Bukit Golf, Sektor VI, Blok C/71, BSD City, Tangerang Selatan 15320, Banten, Indonesia
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