LIKE by Yusuf Ismail
25 February – 25 March 2012
Felt like Filz TV , 2012.
PLATFORM3 mempersembahkan
25 Feb – 25 Mar 2012
LIKE
pameran tunggal Yusuf Ismail.
Pernyataan seniman:
Pada setiap titik, adegan seni kontemporer bukan hanya yang dipetak-petak oleh orang yang berbeda dengan simbol-simbol khas budaya masing-masing, tetapi juga menyajikan pemirsa dengan tantangan untuk mengakui keragaman perspektif untuk melihat dunia. Bahkan seni yang dimulai dari posisi sehari-hari tidak boleh berhenti dengan perbedaan yang signifikan.
Budaya acuan bekarya (referensi), tiru meniru, siapa ikut siapa, fetish idola, serta kemudahan teknologi adalah sebuah hal yang sudah terdengar lazim bahkan menjadi kontrol komoditi massal. Terlebih dengan adanya perpanjangan tangan teknologi citraan informasi yang terus menerus menjadi sumber inspirasi bagi semua orang, menjadikan hal-hal tersebut sebuah budaya serta komunikasi dan makna sosial. Dengan menggunakan hal-hal tersebut sebagai kebutuhan alat kritik, merupakan sebuah amunisi yang saya jadikan sebuah bumerang pada seni kontemporer untuk menentukan intelektual nilai estetika dan makna sosial. Metode pengadaptasian atau bahkan meniru, saya dorong ke permukaan dan saya jadikan sebagai bentuk kritik terhadap seni kontemporer itu sendiri. Sampai saya dapatkan titik jangkauan publik luas dan saya dapatkan garis paralel dari berbagai praktik, setidaknya saya menemukan resonansi dalam strategi komunikasi karya saya.
Eat Like Andy, 2011
Saya sebagai seorang yang bergelut di bidang seni, melakukan sebuah pendekatan referensial dalam karya yang di eksplor. Dengan kadar estetika yang cukup dan batasan-batasan kultural, saya kembali mempertanyakan apa yang bisa dirujuk dan diterima dalam originalitas seni di (seni) zaman kontemporer.
Dengan adanya teknik peminjaman objek-objek yang telah ada, cukup memudahkan saya mengolah olah kembali imej-imej yang sudah ada dan saya reka ulang dengan tema yang berlainan arah. Dalam hal ini representasi menonton dan ditonton adalah kegiatan penting dalam karya saya. Pengamatan terhadap objek referensi mampu mengkaburkan sebuah praktik kritis yang memiliki konteks teoritis yang kompleks yang telah ada sebelumnya. Seorang seniman established terdahulu dengan konteks yang mereka usung, diolah dengan pendekatan mimikri dan saya jadikan mereka sebuah gimmick dalam karya saya untuk menghadirkan sensasi dan potensi menonton yang absurd. Saya merepresentasikan karya seniman terdahulu dengan berpenampilan dan menyerupai figur seniman tersebut, lalu saya biarkan video terdahulu mengontrol adegan yang saya reka ulang berdasarkan video yang saya lihat tersebut. Karena menurut saya sebuah referensi, siapa ikut siapa, tiru meniru, budaya copy paste merupakan keragaman terjadinya perdebatan politik yang kompleks dari nilai-nilai orisinalitas.
Statement from the artist:
At every point, the stage of contemporary art is not merely segmented by different people with their own unique cultural symbols, but it also offers the audience with a challenge to acknowledge the variety of perspectives on observing the world. Even art that begins on a daily, mundane position must not stop with a significant difference.
The culture of referencing, imitation, who follows who, idol fetish, and the convenience of technology are things that are deemed prevalent, and are even the controls of mass commodities. The continued encroachment of technology to deliver and present information has become a source of inspiration for many, creating it into culture, communication with social meaning. By using these objects as tools for criticism, they become my ammunition, serving as a boomerang towards contemporary art to determine the intellectual aesthetic values and social meanings. I have pushed adaptation and copying methods to the surface, forming it into a critique towards contemporary art itself. I achieved a point with a wide access to the public and with many parallels from other practices, discovering resonance in my work’s communication strategy.
I am a person who works in art, using a referential approach in my exploration. With adequate aesthetics and certain cultural limitations, I re-examine the question on what can be referred and accepted as original art in the contemporary (art) era. Using existing techniques of borrowing objects, it was simple for me to reprocess those existing images and engineer them with an opposite theme. Observing the reference object would blur the previous practice of art criticism, with its complex theoretical contexts. An established artist – through the contexts carried – is processed with mimicry, and I use them as a gimmick within my work to create sensation, and a potentially absurd experience. I present the previous artist’s work by dressing and looking like the artist, and then I let the earlier video control my own recreation of the scene, based on what I see in that video. Because I think reference, who follows who, imitation, and the copy-paste culture is a complex, diverse, political argument of the value of originality.
– Yusuf Ismail 2012
Pretty Like Nauman, 2011.
Memasuki 2012, program-program di PLATFORM3 akan fokus pada tema tahunan Global Sensibilities (Sensibilitas Global) sebagai upaya untuk menyela dan mempersoalkan perkembangan mutakhir praktik seni rupa dalam kaitan dengan berbagai aspek globalisasi.
Sejalan dengan itu pula, PLATFORM3 mempersembahkan LIKE, sebuah proyek tunggal seniman asal Bandung, Yusuf Ismail. Sejak pertengahan 2000-an, Yusuf banyak menjelajahi aspek-aspek humor dan komedi dengan medium dan bahasa seni video. Tampilan karya-karyanya seringkali memanfaatkan idiom-idiom media massa elektronik dan teknologi informasi populer. Yusuf menggunakan humor sebagai strategi untuk menyatakan kritik, atau sekadar olok-olok terhadap situasi sosial, di mana pola-pola kehidupan masyarakat kontemporer telah berubah dengan hadirnya teknologi informasi.
Yusuf Ismail memulai penggarapan proyek LIKE sejak akhir 2011, dengan cara ‘menggarap kembali’ karya-karya performans video perupa dunia seperti Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman dan Joseph Beuys. Dengan menggunakan tubuhnya, Yusuf meniru berbagai gerakan, gestur dan ekspresi wajah dalam karya-karya para seniman yang selama ini menjadi referensi sejarah. Hasilnya adalah adegan-adegan performans yang kikuk, canggung dan artifisial, tetapi langsung menyentuh pada pokok-soal penetrasi dan hegemoni kebudayaan global, yang hari-hari berlangsung semakin cepat dan acak melalui teknologi informasi.
Like Three Transition. 2012
Judul pameran ‘LIKE’ juga dipilih untuk merujuk pada salah satu konvensi bahasa dalam media sosial, yakni sebagai suatu sikap afirmasi atau persetujuan. Dari sudut yang lain, dalam bahasa Inggris kata ‘LIKE’ juga dapat bermakna ‘seperti’ atau ‘menyerupai’. Ini adalah upaya Yusuf untuk menggambarkan pola-pola kebudayaan yang mengepung kita hari-hari ini.
(ENG)
Entering 2012, PLATFORM3 programs will be focusing on the year’s theme of Global Sensibilities, as an effort to interrupt and question the advancement of art practice, in relation with various aspects of globalization.
In line with that vision, PLATFORM3 presents LIKE, a solo project by Bandung artist Yusuf Ismail. Since the mid-2000s, Yusuf has explored various aspects of humour and comedy using the video as an art medium. His work often makes use of popular idioms from electronic mass media and information technology circles. Yusuf uses humour as a strategy to deliver criticism, or even simply making fun of certain social situations, where the patterns of contemporary society has changed with information technology.
Yusuf Ismail started work on the LIKE project since the end of 2011, by ‘reprocessing’ performance art videos by global artists like Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman and Joseph Beuys. By using his body, Yusuf imitates various moves, gestures and facial expressions in works that have since become historical references. The results are scenes of awkward performances, stiff and artificial, but immediately touching on the core issue of the penetration and hegemony of global culture, which day by day occurs faster and more random through information technology.
The title of the exhibition, ‘LIKE’, was chosen as a reference to one of the language conventions in social media, used as an expression of affirmation or agreement. From another standpoint, ‘LIKE’ can also mean ‘similar’ or ‘resembling’. This is Yusuf’s attempt to describe the culture patterns embattling us today.
Artist Talk
Bio of Yusuf Ismail
2012
Pameran Bersama Parallab “a role play” ArtShpere, Jakarta ID
2011
Beauty Case ; a contemporary art exhibition, Jakarta Art District, Grand Indonesia, Jakarta, ID
“We are moving” fund raising Show at Platform3, Bandung, ID
3rd OK.video “Flesh”, National Gallery Indonesia, Jakarta, ID
“The New Generation of Indonesia Video Artists” CG Artspace, Plaza Indonesia. Jakarta, ID
“Catching The High Tide” Video art from Indonesia, Brother Joseph McNally Gallery, F101, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.
“Moving Images from Indonesia” a temporary presentation of the video works in the exhibition, studio ZKM_Media Theater (MNK | Museum for Contemporary Art, 1st floor), Berlin.
“Membajak TV” (Hijacking TV)- Video art Exhibition, Salihara Gallery, Jakarta, ID
“SELAMETAN Digital – All Night Long Video and New Media Arts”, LAF (Langgeng Art Foundation ), Yogyakarta, ID
2010
“MEDIACTIONS”, Dislocate CHIYODA ARTS 3331,Japan.
4th Tropical Lab “Urban Mythologies of Singapore” ICA Gallery and Praxis Gallery, Lasalle College, Singapore
“Critical Point” Edwin Gallery, Jakarta, ID
“ArtJog10” Jogja Art Fair, Indonesian Art Now, Yogyakarta, ID
Ilustrasi Cerpen KOMPAS exhibition, Graha KOMPAS Media bulilding Bandung, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Semarang and Bali, ID
New Media Exhibition, collaboration with ruangrupa jakarta, Semarang, Indonesia
“Unsegmented”. Kita Gallery, Bandung ID
“Almost White Cube”, CG Art Space, Plaza Indonesia, Jakarta, ID
“Halimun” The Mist, A reflection upon the development of indonesian contemporary art, Lawangwangi Inaugural Exhibition, Bandung, ID.
2009
“Nu Substance” Video and Installation, CCF Bandung, ID
”Vitamin Art”, Ucup Vs Amenk, Works presentation and screening at Tobucil, Bandung ID
“Amaze” Collaboration works with ButonKultur21, Pacific Place Jakarta, ID
”OK! Video Comedy”, National Gallery, Jakarta, ID
”[Re]Mind Things”, Vanessa Art Link, Jakarta, ID
”Bandung Art Now”, National Gallery, Jakarta, ID
2008
“Deer Andry”, A Solo Exhibition of Andry Moch, S.14, Bandung- Jakarta – Yogyakarta, Indonesia
“Southeast Asian Video Screening” , Bombay Sapphire Art Projects 2008, Kuala Lumpur
“Metaphoria” project 15x15x15 vol.2, Soemardja Gallery, Bandung
“A Decade Of Dedication Ten Years Revisited”, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung.
Grand opening Vivi Yip Art Room, Exhibition of 36 artists in ”INI BARU INI”, Jakarta
Video Sonic Art with Michael Sheridan at Soemardja Gallery, Bandung.
Pikapika Tochka video workshop screening,” Kita!!” Japan Artists Meet Indonesia,Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung
Chikara Matsumoto, Video Workshop,” Kita!!” Japan Artists Meet Indonesia, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung
Final Project Exhibition at Soemardja Gallery, Bandung.
2007
“Grafixhibition 07”, collaboration works of ButonKultur21 CCF Bandung, Indonesia
“46000cm2 Exhibition”, Mini ArtSpace, Soemardja Gallery, Bandung
“Intencity /LoWave” Video Art and Experimental Cinema Screening, Bandung
2006
Potluck Book Festival, video screening by ButonKultur21, Bandung
12th Button Launching, Open House and Exhibition, Bandung
“Resfest 10 – 2006 Goes to Bandung”, Common Room, Kineruku, Bandung
“36 Frame”, Artepolis, Soemardja, Bandung, ID.
“Gang Festival/Gang Noise” Indonesia Australia
”Bandung New Emergence”Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, ID
“Displacement Spaces” Singapore and Bandung, Room No 1/347, IFvenue, and Common Room, ID
Monthly Screening Video Cinematic Lab by Devil Chips KINOKI,Yogyakarta – 347/eat, Bandung – IF Venue, Bandung.
2005
“Video Checkpoint” by Devil Chips ; Common Room Bandung
“Urban Cartography Vol. 01”: Bandung Creative Communities,CP Biennale 2005. Jakarta, ID.
Video Babes Video Screening Compilation ; Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung
“Synch Electronic Music and Digital Arts Festival 2005”, Greek
Cultural Futures “Space, Ground and Practise in Asia Pacific New Media Arts” Tamaki Makaurau; Auckland, New Zealand.
Video and Film Experimental Screening ;Minikino, Jakarta – Bandung – Bali
Music Video Workshop Exhibition ”Britt Nite Out”, Amare Lounge Café, Bandung
Video Screening ”Rec It” 2004 ; Video Babes ,Common Room, Bandung
2004
Video Screening ”Love Is”, Common Room, QB, Oktagon, Griya Musik, Bandung, Jakarta, Bali, ID.
Workshop Exhibition Liquid Picture ”Re-Inventing Bandung”, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space Bandung
TPB FSRD-ITB 2001 Exhibition Aula Barat-ITB,Bandung
PLATFORM3-Bandung 