Street art makes its entrance into the exhibition space with two or three layers of
anxiety. The artists are worried that their art would become tame, yielding, and
sterile. The exhibition organizer might suppose that what would be on display is
inchoate horror, neither fearsome nor entertaining. Meanwhile, the audience might
feel a peculiar sensation of being suspended in a realm of threshold that is neither
of the art nor of the street.
Had we been aware of the fact that street art is the kind of art that is full of
paradoxes, we would certainly transform such disquiet into delight.
it can also take things apart, moving in any direction, seemingly expansive like life
itself. who are able to draw lessons from the tides of art movements and genres from
all over the world, and at the same time they act as if they are dismissing art. They
are omnivores who would devour any techniques and media in order to boost their
productions.
Meanwhile, the adjective of “street” in “street art” is ambiguous. The artists do not
venerate the street, and they are not constricted by it, either. “Street” also constitutes
the opportunity to appear on Hermes bags, to interrupt philosophical discussions
about art, or to make art as fun as skateboarding.
We are pleased because this exhibition, while making no pretension to presenting
novelty, enables us to re-‐observe how street art is doing after having been
recognized for more or less a decade. By presenting those who work in Paris and
Jakarta, the exhibition analyzes how the rustic and the semi-‐urban assign new
meanings on the street, and how the margin exchange places with the center.
Indeed, as the curator Alia Swastika has said, an exhibition like this lessens the
distance between the guerilla and the mainstream.
As has been the norm, Komunitas Salihara does not see any contradiction between
being engaged in a guerilla movement and moving to the center. We are aware that
there are not a few artists of repute who also want to rebel in order to create distinct
works, ones that agitate the market. On the other hand, we also need to delve deep
below the surface, to discover new seeds and present them to the public.
That is thus the way of this street art exhibition: it brings those who have been
accepted at the center as well as those who are still moving wildly on the margins. It
freely exchanges the two positions.
I am pleased because this exhibition underlines Komunitas Salihara’s stance to
maintain and foster diversity. By diversity we mean the potpourri of artistic sources
that we have and the artists’ perspectives toward them. We strive to present works
of art from a variety of types and backgrounds, reprocessed in novel contexts and
needs. Avant-‐gardism might be something of the past, but it is clear that artists must
rejuvenate themselves, unceasingly reformulating their relationships with art history
as well as with the society around them.
And so the artists of Jakarta and Paris are contrasting their inherent contexts and at
the same time exchanging them. They embark on an affair, enjoying one another,
stealing from each other, in order to discover their respective future. I believe our
disquiet has not been futile, and our delight is not excessive.
Galeri Salihara
Nirwan Dewanto
http://www.wallworks.fr/site_galerie_wallworks2/media/graffiti_book.pdf
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