Rudi Mantofani

Private Asian Collection

Excellent overall condition as viewed. There is a very minor, small area of abrasion to paint on the right side, where the canvas wraps around the wide stretcher bar. Unframed, on a Stretcher.
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The present lot Sudut-sudut Coklat (Brown Corners) epitomizes the scintillating and philosophical works by Rudi Mantofani, an artist who currently stands as one of the most prominent figures in the contemporary Southeast Asian art scene. Emerging at a time when Indonesian artists were acutely influenced by the tempestuous socio-political realities of the 1990s, Mantofani and his fellow visionaries from the Jendela Art Group yearned to create an oeuvre devoid of any partisan commentary. Rather, these young artists sought to explore what humanity seemed to disregard: the hackneyed and the sublime.

The collective comprised Mantofani and his peers Handiwirman Saputra, Yusra Martinus, Jumaldi Alfi and Yunizar, all fellow alumni of the Indonesian Institute of Art in Yogyakarta who strived to manifest a fresh inception in the visual language of the nation at the turn of the century. Drawn together by their common roots in West Sumatra, these members supported one another while retaining aesthetic autonomy. Though each is unique in his creative opus, all artists have mutually decided to refrain from any overt proclamation of their own political and social beliefs. Instead, their work inspires the beholder to independently decipher the abstruse messages within their witty pictorial parables.

The composition of Sudut-sudut Coklat, which contains a progression of squares balanced at the center of the canvas, encourages the onlooker to question the context, scale and directional overview of the squares portrayed. Comparable to Ahmad Sadali’s Abstract Orange, which depicts lozenges of color suspended in negative space, the configuration of the present lot echoes non-representational works that arose during the Post-War era. However, it is clear that the content of the geometrical shapes on Mantofani’s canvas are in fact, mimetic.

Along the margins of the canvas is a dense forest, viewed from an aerial standpoint. With the graphic absence of branches and trunks, the trees materialize as a blanket of interlocking leaves. Through his sagacious choice of perspective, Mantofani unifies the copious, individual trees, prompting them to appear as a single entity. It is instantly conceivable that the square at midpoint simply does not belong in its setting. In fact, the mere existence of it pushes the bountiful forest to the periphery of the picture plane.

Mantofani’s ingenious use of treatment befuddles the spectator. This intrusive square could embody a gaping fissure in the soil, much like the indented ‘shadow’ in Jatuh dalam bayangan (Falling inside the shadow). Alternatively, it may instead represent an upright contour, which protrudes from the surface of the earth, akin to that of a pyramid that has been cropped at its apex. Regardless of whether it is a chasm or an erect plateau, the very fact that the mysterious entity is a perfectly modeled square with four sharp corners, suggests that it is artificial. Its very presence has eradicated a mass of the prolific greenery that would have otherwise inhabited the land.

The disorienting and unsettling effect of the painting invokes the surrealist works of Rene Magritte. La Grande table presents an incongruous sight: a concrete, gigantic apple resting on the foreground of a hauntingly barren beach. Correspondingly, the synthetic mountain in Mantofani’s work appears displaced, contradictory to the organic forest to which it is appended. The incompatibility, deliberately positioned, stimulates the viewer to ponder over rather quotidian concepts that are typically taken for granted.

Within the square transpires a glistening body of water, reflecting blue, pink and yellow from the sky above, at once allusive to a digital screen from a television or computer. The multicolored strokes hark back to his painting Cakrawala warna #3 (ref 4), which illustrates a panorama of trees obscured by a lamina of polychromatic stripes. The similitude between the image of a water body and that of a digital screen places these entities on par with one another actuating a tenuous analogy between the hand of God and that of mankind. We are reminded that the colors by which we are surrounded on a circadian basis exist inherently within nature. Color, the very fabric of our beings and environments, is attached to every object, be it natural or artificial. Mantofani takes us back full circle, forcing us to face the source of almost all components of our daily lives.

The tree, which is habitually included in Mantofani’s repertoire, may symbolize all that is unadulterated. By presenting an ersatz object amidst woodland, Mantofani conjures thoughts of territorial power and domination. Human beings inhabit spaces that were once natural, transforming ecosystems with the accoutrements of human civilizations. To him, each object inherently possesses its own value expressed beyond the domain of verbal lexicons. Without imposing his own opinions on the beholder, Mantofani ‘observes the issues’ of human exploitation of Mother Nature. Subsequently, he ‘presents an art object’ which speaks to each individual in its own way. The viewer, affected by the dynamics of his own mind, formulates his own interpretation of and relationship with this painting.

The location of the image is anonymous. Retaining its universality, the scene may as well be in any part of the world. Alternatively, the treetops could conceivably be discerned as moss, and the large pit could embody an ant hole. Eradicating any sense of context, Mantofani summons the concept of spatiality and the arena of experience. He lays bare the geographical and conceptual boundaries we confine ourselves in by nullifying the significance of the local, national, regional, microcosmic and macrocosmic. For the artist, the earth is a single place full of interdependent relationships, where one experience affects the other. We are simply creatures of the earth and people of world.  

The work becomes a theoretical microcosm of human existence in a globalized world where change is a constant. Shifts in physical environments, fluctuations in collective consciousness, and progressions in memory move at such a rapid pace that spatiality depreciates in significance over time. Mimicking the ever shrinking and interconnected world, Mantofani reduces our massive earth to fit the four corners of a square.