Premier Exhibition of Southeast Asian Art comes to Wendt Gallery - New York

My World, Your World, Our World

When: Wednesday March 19 through April 30, 2010

Where: Wendt Gallery New York - 41 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022

www.wendtgallery.com

The newly opened Wendt Gallery of New York is proud to present a cornerstone of its gallery program with a survey of contemporary Indonesian art from the mid-20^th century to the present in an exhibition entitled “My World, Your World, Our World.” Timed to open during Asian Contemporary Art Week 2010, works by a select group of artists who are well known throughout Asia are being presented for the first time in the heart of New York at the landmark Fuller building.  The Wendt Gallery is committed to bringing this vibrant niche of the contemporary art landscape to a wider audience.

“My World, Your World, Our World,” the exhibition curated by gallery owner Serina Manqueros, follows on “Visions of Southeast Asia,” a show that Manqueros assembled for Wendt Gallery in Laguna Beach this past January.  Mrs. Manqueros is developing the global gallery program for Wendt Galleries worldwide (New York, Laguna Beach, Singapore, Vienna), with a focus on Contemporary Southeast Asian art and Modernism.

“This has been our vision for several years,” Mr. Manqueros says. “There was no anchor for Contemporary Southeast Asian art in the West, so we decided to make this wonderful, powerful and compelling art a key component of our multi-gallery program. It is a burgeoning, energetic market.”

Most of the artists featured in the new gallery exhibition are from Indonesia, an archipelago of over 13,000 islands (6000 inhabitable) that is the world’s third largest democracy and largest Muslim nation.  The turbulent socio-political landscape in Indonesia from WWII to the present (the country endured decades of repressive, authoritarian rule for 50 years before its first free parliamentary election in 1999) inspired an era of explosively charged and passionate work.

An exhibition highlight is the 5-part painting, “Holy Beer” by Augus Suwage (b. Indonesia 1959), perhaps the most highly regarded contemporary artist in Indonesia today.  The work is an exploration of the infinite possibilities of self-portraiture - a central aspect of Mr. Suwage’s oeuvre.  Suwage was awarded a residency at the Museum of Modern Art in Koshigaya-shi Saitama, Japan IN WHAT YEAR, a solo exhibition at the Gallery Avanthay Contemporary in Zurich, Switzerland in 2008 (“Beauty in the Dark”), and a retrospective show at the Jogja National Museum in Indonesia (“Still Crazy After All These Years”).

Also highly regarded and an auction house favorite, FX Harsono (b. Indonesia 1948) is represented in the Wendt show with two works, “Floating Between Threats” (2008) and “Deep in a Dream” (2010).  Of Chinese descent (as is Suwage) in a country where there has been longstanding discrimination against this ethnic group, Harsono is noted for his unflinching examination of this theme in his artwork and performance art.  The needles and butterflies seen in these two paintings also recur throughout his work as symbols of the dominion of power, and powerless beings, respectively. He was given a solo exhibition in 2007 at the prestigious Langgeng Icon Gallery in Indonesia.

The surrealist and eccentric style of Indonesian artist Agapetus Kristiandana (b. Indonesia 1968) is evident in the piece “In Memoriam.” Sometimes shocking, often humorous, Agapetus explores aspects of the human condition -- alienation, isolation and conflict -- through the depiction of animals, especially cows and pigs.  Animal tales (and the worship of cows) figure prominently in Hinduism, which was the predominant religion in Indonesia before Islam (and its proscription of the consumption of pigs) became widespread there in the Middle Ages.

The exhibition also includes two paintings by Stefan Buana (b. Indonesia 1971), “My Flag Merah Puti” and “Indonesia My Country #2.”  With a style both somber and symbolic, Buana’s paintings explore the tensions inherent in the dissonance between modernity and tradition and how this impacts life in Indonesia today. He has been exhibited in Indonesia and Singapore, most prominently with a solo exhibition at the National Gallery in Jakarta in 2008.

Works by eight more artists complete the program.

Wendt Gallery is a full service art gallery specializing in Contemporary Southeast Asian art and Bauhaus-inspired Modernism. This exhibition of Contemporary Indonesian art is a first step towards igniting interest in this fast emerging and fascinating niche of the international art market.

Exhibition runs through April 30, 2010.

For more information, please call (877) 936-3838 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .