Self-discovery is best paired with solitude. Galerie Stephanie’s group show for this year’s edition of MoCAF entitled Alone But Never Lonely feature the works of Lyndon Maglalang, Mr. S, Thea Quiachon, Imam Santoso and Hideo Tanaka, and courses across ideas on solitude and community, self-analysis and social exchanges.
With a minimal palette, Thea Quiachon‘s impastos Time Capsule 1,2 & 3 illustrate figures under the perpetual gaze of an all-seeing eye. In her work she exhumes memories and desires from the ridged plains and valleys of the past, the present and the unforeseeable future.
Born in the late nineties, Kim Borja‘s work is a synthesis of childhood memories and elements from children’s stories. In her work for MOCAF, draped on the girl’s shoulder is a character reminiscent of an imaginary friend, invisible giver of comfort and stability. Borja, in line with the general motif of her work, experiments with her fluoro busts as if to take a sculptural snapshot of a fleeting, childhood memory.
Against black hills and bristly grass, here lies lifelessness, or rather, the impression of a lifeless body. Hovering precariously above it are shapes much like boulders, its levity defying its physicality. Lyndon Maglalang deliberately and deftly blocks out violence and death, rendering just a hint, an outline or a faint impression, much like an audio bleep or a visual blur.
Imam Santoso was born in the Indonesian art capital of Yogyakarta, and works as both professional artist and conservator at the National Museum of Indonesia. Santoso presents daydreams and reveries bursting in technicolor, set against scenes of taverns or domesticity and tinged with touches of folk art elements. These are vivid, simple triumphs over life’s daily adversities, celebrating the little victories of the mind.
Mark Jeffrey Santos, more known under the moniker Mr. S or Mister Sasquatch, who, before crossing over as full-time artist, did years of work in the industry of video and film where remnants of this experience is evident from the world-building and constructed fantasy which permeate his works. Sometimes surreal and almost always whimsical, Mr. S, of late, had been producing work gleaned from the Japonisme movement.
The initial encounter with Tokyo-based painter Hideo Tanaka‘s work can easily be regarded as one of a photorealist endeavor, but Tanaka’s paintings require a more studied observation, after which it reveals its surreal leanings. Quiet and contemplative, his work has whispers of being in the precipice of epiphany, knowing how to effectively jolt us out of a complacency from how he marries elements and his narratives.
Curated by Liv Vinluan