“ Man made ”
By Fuad Arif
“The painter’s obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work. People are driven towards making work of art, not by familiarity with the process by which this is done, but a necessity to communicate their feelings about the object of their choice with such intensity that these feeling become infectious. ”.
-Lucian Freud
Each period has its atypical image of man. It has appears in poems, novels, music, philosophy and dance and theater and it has also appears in paintings and sculptures. Whenever a new period is conceived in the womb of the preceding period, a new image of man move forward towards the surface and finally breaks through to find the artists and philosophers. We have been living for decades at a turning point and nothing is more declarative of this fact than the series of revolutionary styles in the visual arts which have followed each other since the beginning of our century. Each of these styles transformed the image of man drastically, even when compared to the changes of the past couple of centuries. Some have tried to discover the organic forms of man’s body, the human character of his face, the uniqueness of his individual person. And in our contemporary world some are asking, “what has happened to man”?
If we listen to the more profound observers of our period, we hear them speak of the danger in which modern man lives, the danger of losing his humanity; a thing amongst the things he produces. Humanity is not something man simply has. He must fight for it anew in every generation, and he may lose his fight. There have been few periods in history in which a catastrophic defeat was more threatening than in ours. For example one need only look at the dehumanizing structures of the totalitarian systems in one half of the worlds, and the dehumanizing consequences of technical mass civilization in the other half. In addition, the conflict between them may lead to the annihilation of humanity. The impact of this predicament produces on the other hand an adaptation to the necessities of present-day living and indifference to the question of the meaning of human existence and on the other, anxiety, despair and revolt against the dilemma. The first group resigns itself to becoming things amongst things, giving up its individual self. The second group tries frantically to oppose this danger.
The works of art of our century are mirrors of our predicament by some of the most sensitive minds of our time. In the light of our predicament we must look at the works of contemporary art, and conversely, in the light of contemporary works of art we must look at our predicament. The image of man became transformed, distorted, disrupted and finally disappeared. But as in the reality of our lives, so in its mirror of the visual arts, the human protest arises against the fate to become a thing.
Thus the artist who is shown in this exhibition is a harsh representative of such protest amongst many that has appeared in these recent years. He wants to regain the image of man in his works, but is too honest to turn back to earlier naturalistic or idealistic forms, and he is too conscious of the limits implied in our present situation to jump ahead into the so-called modern reality.
The artist tries to depict true representations of human predicament, as he experienced it within and outside himself. The question as to how well he succeeded artistically cannot be answered by anyone including myself as the writer. And the question as how well he succeeded in stating the ‘story’ of his works is a matter of personal and philosophical interpretation. If we trace back the development of human existence in art since the beginning of the century the negative emphasis in the expression of the fight for humanity by far prevail. This is somewhat true of the works presented in this exhibition with his distortion of man realities to become conscious towards his surroundings. His works has the trace of the battle for the human image he wants to rediscover by understanding his feeling through an unconscious dilemmatic decision. And along the way he has somewhat tried to resists temptation of tired deterioration or premature solutions within his own capacity. I believe he has fight desperately over the image of man and had tried to understand man, but in actual condition is slowly discovering himself.
Street Spirit
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 188 x 132cmSihir Di Bibir
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 58 x 42cm Rasional Emosional IV
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 193 x 132cm Rasional Emosional III
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 193 x 132cm Rasional Emosional II
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 193 x 132cm Rasional Emosional I
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 193 x 132cm Pirate King
2009/Mixed media on canvas/138 x 100cm Pirate
2009 / Mixed media on canvas /23 x 17.5cm Pandang Kiri
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 128 x 128cmPandang Kanan
2009 / Mixed media on canvas/175.5 x 132cm
King Lekuk
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 78 x 73cm
Is This It
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 60 x 60cm
Gundah
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 65 x 120cm
Great Smile
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 175.5 x 128cm
Berlari- berlari Mencari
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 132 x 188cm
Aku Tahu Kau Pun Tahu
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 175.5 x 132cm
1000 Kali Sayang I
2009 / Mixed media on canvas / 93 x 134cm