PLATFORM3

PLATFORM3 proudly presents bits & pix, an exhibition featuring the work of Narpati Awangga, otherwise known as Oomleo. Oomleo (born in Jakarta, 8 March 1978) is a young artist who once studied in the Painting Studio of Indonesian Institute of Arts Yogyakarta. People generally recognize Oomleo’s name as a musician, designer, writer, radio DJ, MC, club DJ, travelling karaoke guide and an activits in Ruang Rupa’s artist community. Most music fans obviously would know him more popularly as a member of the electronic music group Goodnight Electric. Not many know, though, that he is an artist who has long worked on developing a unique technique and visual style.



Bits & pix is his first solo exhibition featuring pixel art, which will feature digital print and video work made by Oomleo during the past 5 years. Since he first fell in love with the ‘magical thing’ called a computer, Oomleo’s life was never far from various forms of digital culture. He admits that for the last ten years, half of his life was spent with computers. He loves computers more than any other object – he has long slept and eaten together with a computer – and is willing to do anything to support his hobby downloading various things from the internet.



It is through this intense relationship with computers Oomleo discovered an art or imagery genre which he thinks reflects the spirit of the digital age – pixel art. Pixels are the collection of dots we often see when we look at a computer monitor, caused by alternating shades of light from RGB cathode-ray tubes (or color differentiation systems on liquid crystal displays/LCDs). This pixel-based art is very unique and retains a distinct level of difficulty. Differing from other forms of vector-based digital images, pixel-based images define the picture’s plan based on resolution measurements and framing.



The work featured in bits & pix not only reflect a new aesthetic – the digital aesthetic – born from computer technology, but is also an adaptation of translating global culture dominated by trust in information technology. We not only see the digital lingua franca in Oomleo’s work, but also skillfull craftmanship and symbols close to our daily lives. Humor and cheekiness coincide with absurdity; chaotic, complicated compositions in miniature size – all of this combine and intergrate into a strong and characteristic pixel art.

Platform3



Artist’s Statement

For the last 10 years, I have spent almost half my life in front of the computer. This has never happened in the past: sitting, and looking closely at some sort of magical glass screen, observing everything happening in the world without having to turn my head, or squint, or stare. I do not have to travel, to break my back to get money, because there are so many activities that can be done without moving much of my body.



Pixels are the collection of dots that we see when we look at a computer. My pixel art work is a result of my relationship with my computer. My work is a pixelization of imagination, desire, babble, stories, dreams, and so on. It is a mediation of hardware, so that the ‘bit’ world can be felt by the ‘atoms’ of the world.

This is me, a servant of the digital world. I love the computer, more than anything.

oomleo

More info:
http://infoplatform3.wordpress.com/coming-soon/project-no-11-bits-and-pix/


Article about the exhibition by Roy Voragen in Whiteboard Journal

The rain had stopped and we gathered for an opening at Platform3 on a Sunday afternoon, April 14, to see work by Narpati Awangga, who is better known as oomleo. We come to Platform3 to meet our friends (and their kids) and see art.

Three prominent curators – Rifky Effendy, Aminudin TH Siregaror and Agung Hujatnikajennong – and three successful artists – Ariadhitya Pramuhendra , Wiyoga Muhardentet and Radi Arwinda – founded Platform3 in 2010 to offer artists a platform to experiment. Each year, solo exhibitions are loosely organized around a different theme: art and postcolonialism in the first year, art and religiosity the second, and this year art and global sensibility.

The exhibitions at Platform3 are a wonderful combination of ambition and a good sense of humor. Especially the last two exhibitions attest to that. Like, the previous exhibition, by Yusuf Ismail was a witty appropriation of the history of video art (subsequently, Yusuf Ismail won the Bandung Contemporary Art Award. And oomleo took it a notch or two up on the humor scale. After all, he must have thought, why should art be a serious business? Which doesn’t mean that his works look sloppy, the artworks are all very well executed.

After having completed art school in Yogyakarta, oomleo (b.1978) returned to the city of his birth: Jakarta. And while he was trained as a painter, he got involved in the electronic music scene and he formed the group Goodnight Electric. In Jakarta, he is also active with the prolific artists’ collective ruangrupa….(read more)

http://whiteboardjournal.com/news/art-design/bits-pix-oomleo-at-platform3.html

Artist’s
Statement

“Our freedom to assert our personal identities can sometimes be extraordinarily limited in the eyes of others, no matter how we see ourselves.” - Amartya Sen in “Identity and Violence”.

In recent years I have been exploring the notions of identity and the role played by gender and religious and civilizational classifications in the perception and attribution of identity. Over the past few decades, I have had the opportunity of observing issues of identity related to gender and religious and civilizational classifications in Pakistan and in Algeria.



I have found that, in spite of the categorization imposed by the state and/or the dominant members of society, the women have struggled to assert their identities as they see themselves. The discrimination and the violence engendered by such classifications though not the same do indeed exist at different levels, shielded by old customs and practices that are accepted unquestioningly.

My work is an hommage to these women, who try to take control of their destinies and to exist as multi-­‐faceted human beings instead of as beings with a single identity. In the case of religious classification, for certain fundamentalists one‘s identity is asserted by the religion that one belongs to, suppressing all other identities. As far as Muslim fundamentalism is concerned one’s identity is Islamic, pertaining to a particular kind of Islam and nothing else. I have taken the case of suicide bombers who accept this classification imposed on to them to perpetrate a violently barbaric act to achieve an eternity of sublime beauty. The portraits are a combination of different techniques and technical approaches, all greatly influenced by my experiences as a printmaker: photography, digital art work and Mughal miniature painting*.

Which is characterized by its rigueur and the use of minute marks to build up colour and texture. Initially the objective of this particular image building process was to look at the tradition of Mughal miniature painting in the contemporary context.

SABINA GILLANI

*The Mughal school of miniature painting was established in Mughal India in the 16th Century CE as a result of contacts between Persian miniature painters and Indian artists.

Sabina Gillani

Born in 1965. Lahore, Pakistan.

Lives and works between France and Pakistan.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2008

Centre Culturel Franﾍais d’Alger. Algiers, Algeria

Galerie Guedjati. SŽtif, Algeria

2006

Rohtas II. Lahore, Pakistan.

1996

Rohtas Gallery. Islamabad, Pakistan.

Gallery NCA. Lahore, Pakistan.

1992 Rohtas Gallery. Islamabad, Pakistan.

Gallery 306. Toronto, Canada.

1991 Chawkundi Gallery. Karachi, Pakistan.

Interiors Gallery. Islamabad, Pakistan.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2005 “Re-inventing narratives”. Galerie el Fassi. Rabat, Morocco.

2003 “Calme, douceur et voluptŽ” La Biennale d’Issy. MusŽe de la cartes ˆ jouer. Issy les Moulineaux,

France.

2000 “Pakistan : Another Vision”. Brunei Gallery, SOAS. London, UK.

1997 “Rumours of spring”. Colombo, Sri Lanka.

1996 Chawkundi Gallery. Karachi, Pakistan.

1995 “Out of Pakistan”. Boston, USA.

1994 “An Intelligent Rebellion”. Cartwright Hall, Bradford City Museum. Bradford, UK.

“Prints from the Slade School”. Elektra Fine Art. Toronto, Canada.

National Gallery. Islamabad, Pakistan.

Open Studio. Toronto, Canada.

1991 Rohtas Gallery. Islamabad, Pakistan.

“Women painters of Pakistan”. National Gallery. Islamabad, Pakistan.

Shakir Ali Museum. Lahore, Pakistan.

Workshops

1999 Aftershave International Workshop. Jos, Nigeria.

Catalogues and books

Re-inventing narratives. 2005

Women Artists of Pakistan. 2000

Pakistan: Another Vision. 2000

Rumours of Spring. 1997

An Intelligent Rebellion. 1994

Grants and sholarships

1992 Aga Khan Foundation Scholarship. Canada.

1992 Ontario Council of Arts. Canada.

1991 Don Philips Scholarship for etching and lithography. Open Studio. Toronto, Canada.

Collections

Cartwright Hall, Bradford City Museum. Bradford, UK.

High Commission of Pakistan. New Delhi, India.

Governor’s House. Sind. Karachi, Pakistan.

More info: http://infoplatform3.wordpress.com/coming-soon/project-no-12-revealing-identities-by-sabina-gillani/

A project by Wiyoga Muhardanto

Platform 3 proudly presents the latest artwork by Wiyoga Muhardanto (born in 1984), which will be presented as a site-specific installation in Art Future Hong Kong International Art Fair (ArtHK12).

In this exhibition, the artist presents an installation work composed of various objects that one might associate with the famous and distinctive Japanese brand Muji, whose various products range from clothes, furniture and home appliances to food and drinks. Here Muhardanto does not only make the emphasis on branded products, but also borrows the ambiance of thisparticular brand or its approach to product presentations. There is, however, a slight difference: here Muhardanto presents a variety of objects related to art supplies, for example canvases, frames and pedestals—the objects that we often see in the opening events of art exhibitions.

Over the last few years, Muhardanto has been playing with signs and signifier values of objects, capturing the consumer culture of the urban society. In his works, the artist uses the strategy of visual likeness, mimicking the superficial nature of objects while simultaneously slightly reshaping them. Muhardanto plays with perception/reception to deceive his audience.

In today’s installation, titled Distinctive Items, the artist also plays with perception, making use of the behaviour of consumers in mass culture and the art world, as he positions the audience as observers of a global brand in the context of the space where the work is located. He also uses these elements in his booth at art fair events. These displayed objects can be seen as ambiguous signs

- PLATFORM3

More info: http://infoplatform3.wordpress.com/photos/platform3-art-future-arthk12/