The Introduction to Impertinent

Mooi Indie (‘beautiful Indies’) was a formative European style of Romantic painting propagated by Dutch painters in Indonesia and later used to sell the beauty of Indonesia to foreigners. From the early 20th century the tradition was fiercely rejected by Indonesian artists in the context of the Independence and the modern movement, when it was likened to tourist art for its use of common tropes such as mountains, coconut trees and rice fields. ‘The Introduction to Impertinent’ takes its distant landscape view of Semeru volcano in East Java, beside three coconut trees, from a painting by Dutch artist Abram Salm (1801-1876) who spent 29 years in Indonesia. In the foreground the lone viewer who appears in several of Zico Albaiquni’s works peers through a frame to see German artist Anne Imhof, winner of the prestigious Golden Lion award for her celebrated installation ‘Faust’ at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Placed in the foreground under swathes of fluoro-colour are a pair of camels which Albaiquni has copied from a museum diorama of Australian camels displayed at Museum Satwa in East Java.

Albaiquni’s paintings include a wide range of references and juxtapositions, examining Indonesian painting traditions and broader art histories, with a particular interest in how the Indonesian landscape has been treated and commodified throughout history. Underpinning these investigations is the Indonesian concept of ‘lukisan’ (roughly translating as ‘painting’) and its ethnic ties to ritual, exchange and the creation of sacred objects.

Albaiquni’s distinct palette arises from pigment combinations drawn from the colonial painting genre of Mooi Indie (‘beautiful Indies’), while different picture planes and points of perspective intersect, and combinations of irregular-shaped canvases create multilayered compositions. He borrows imagery from disparate sources: from the acclaimed nineteenth century Indonesian painter Raden Saleh, to museum dioramas, tourist art, signature works by contemporary Indonesian artists and installation views from international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale and ‘The 1st Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ in 1993. The results blend elements of art history, religious figures and gallery settings, as well as incorporating the public art viewer and the private space of the artists’ studio into the image in order to probe the relationships between artist, artwork, the viewer and art history.

Exhibited in 'The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' (APT9) | 24 Nov 2018 – 28 Apr 2019