Comic art of Popok Tri Wahyudito portrays scenes of transport calamity

GALLERY SHOWS COMIC ART DRAWING INDONESIA

In July this year, Valentine Willie Fine Art (VWFA) partnered with Kuala Lumpur’s The Annexe Gallery to bring “BERGERak” to Malaysia. In his first Malaysian solo, Indonesian artist Popok Tri Wahyudi, uses “Jogja comic style” to create paintings which narrate the experiences of “cattle-class” airline travellers and other mass transport users. His work is accessible to a wide audience because of its familiar subject matter and simple, colorful presentation.

'Please Let Me Go', 2010, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 188 cm. Image courtesy of VWFA.

“Popok Tri Wahyudhi’s works in his first Malaysian solo exhibition are stories about commuting, travelling, human mobility and migration. Presented in a wide range of media, from paintings and drawings to woodblock prints, silkscreen on canvas and mini sculptures, these bittersweet and sometimes macabre narratives negate the glamorous images of the jet set…” Valentine Willie Fine Art

The artist is one of the founding members of Apotik Komik, an artist group formed in 1997 by thirteen students from Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta. The group first created mural work and then moved into printing comics, publications more visual and alternative than what was available in Indonesia at that time. Their style, influenced heavily by popular culture, is known as “playful”.

'...oops!!!', 2010, woodcut on paper, 79.5 x 54.5 cm. Image courtesy of VWFA.

He is most well known for portraying Indonesian life and political situations in a sinister comic light. However he has worked with international subject matter, most notably during artist residencies at California’s 18^th Street Art Center in 2001 and the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in 2007. In addition to making paintings in his signature comic style, he has also worked on large scale wall art and created and exhibited three-dimensional pieces.

Popok Tri Wahyudi was born in Mojokerto, East Java, in April, 1973.

KN

Related Topics: Indonesian artists, Southeast Asian artists, gallery shows, drawing

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First New York exhibition for celebrated Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak

THAI FEMINIST ART

Pinaree Sanpitak, artistic chameleon and feminist artist, will hold her first New York exhibition, Quietly Floating, at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in March this year.

Quietly Floating Quietly Funny, 2008

Sanpitak is a prolific and celebrated Thai artist who takes her inspiration directly from the female form.

The exhibition will feature a series of large monochromatic paintings of breasts and cloud forms, a number of drawings on paper expressing the same imagery, and an installation of large aluminium mirrors.

Dark and Sweet, 2008

These works, created during a 2008 artist residency at the Montalvo Arts Center in California, USA, build on an earlier series of works titled Breasts and Clouds, started in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2006.

“The form of clouds came about in a hot studio in the summer months of Bangkok in 2006. Later a friend told me that there’s a word in Pali/Sanskrit called Pa-yo-ta-ra which means beholder of water and giver of milk.” (Pinaree Sanpitak, artist statement)

Over the Blue, Breasts and Clouds, 100 Tonson Gallery, Bangkok, 2007

A versatile and prolific artist, Sanpitak has worked in an abundance of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, and performance. In 2005, she even delved into the culinary arts with her Breast Stupa Cookery series.

Breast Stupa Cookery

Sanpitak has been a powerful voice in Thai art since the 1980s, contributing a strong female presence to her local art scene.

Many critics and art writers contribute the formation of her artistic style to the birth of her son in 1993. However, it seems she has been working with abstracted female iconography since the late 1980s.

She has held solo exhibitions in Asia, America and Europe and has participated in major biennials in Australia, Italy, Japan and Korea.

Quietly Floating will show at New York gallery Tyler Rollins Fine Art from 4 March to 17 April this year. The gallery will host an artist talk on Saturday 13 March from 2 pm.

KN

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