MADE BY EMTE

Curated by Bob Edrian

Edwin’s gallery

Jakarta, Indonesia

 

Structurally, the five artists in the On Traces exhibit a variety of ideas if the trail goes through exploring three levels of consciousness: conscious, conscious, and subconscious. Some of them even explore slices between two types of levels. The pattern of relations between artists' ideas and psychology has always been an interesting thing to be raised in the field of art. In The Artist's Mind: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Creativity, Modern Art and Modern Artists (2010), the author, George Hagman, quotes Carl Rotenberg (Learning from Kohut: Progress in Self Psychology Vol. 4, 1988) to describe the pattern of relations:

 

The area of interaction between the artist and his own work, he puts his own puzzles and mental ambiguities outside himself and then reacts to them as if they were other than his. In a sense, once the artist begins a work, he surrenders to it as though the work were dominating him, demanding a solution of its own ambiguities, and requiring completion. The artist experiences self object functioning of the artwork as alive, active, and interpretive and eventually having transformative capabilities, to the extent that inner puzzles of the artist are worked through this externalization.

 

The On Traces exhibition in the end is an attempt to uncover the relationship between artists, the drive to work, in this case if the idea is 'trail,' and the final result or visual work. Engagement between the three is expected to increase public understanding and appreciation of individuals and their work.

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Bob Edrian

Curator