I NYOMAN MASRIADI | Bad Drama

This work is in good overall condition as viewed. Framed.
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An Indonesian artist who has made a distinguished mark on the contemporary Southeast Asian Art scene, I Nyoman Masriadi earned international acclaim for his masterful, large-scale, and visually arresting figurative works. Born in Bali and currently based in the flourishing artistic city of Yogyakarta, the artist ingeniously weaves sardonic visual imagery in his poignant narratives in an endeavour to critique underlying tensions that pervade Indonesian socio-politics and daily life. Known to have conceived a distinct and unique pictorial style, much of Masriadi’s expansive oeuvre has centred on his curiosities around the human body and globalisation; the sensuous link between the two, both playing part in the shaping of each other. He portrays increasingly prominent attitudes towards materialism, with hints to its ever-growing presence subtly depicted in his works: symbols of the materialist aesthetics are small in size, but are somehow conspicuous in his work. The artist typically depicts these through props, commodified objects, or signifies them through accessories and items of clothing adorned by his figures. Masriadi’s artistic practice is characteristic for infusing wit and satire into sculptural depictions of hyper-inflated, dark-skinned, and heavily muscled protagonists. Through his visually alluring vernacular, his striking compositions serve as refreshing and insightful parodic commentaries on modernity and Indonesia’s contemporary cultural history.

The present lot entitled Bad Drama is yet another momentous work by the artist that fervently demonstrates Masriadi’s incessant fascination with the male physique. Visually commanding and bursting with masculine energy, the painting features three overtly muscular men with veiny, leathery black skin, devilishly grinning ear-to-ear – likened to the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland - as they menacingly gaze out towards the space of the viewer. Rendered against a simple and muted grey backdrop, Masriadi’s ebony figures come to the fore, confronting the viewer with their obtrusive presence, dominating the canvas from the top to the bottom of the picture plane. Bad Drama is executed in Masriadi’s signature grotesque aesthetic, where his bold and brawny characters are delineated with exaggerated facial features; bearing impossibly meaty noses, narrowed shifty eyes, high arching eyebrows, and towering veneered teeth, that cohesively function to accentuate and heighten the intimidating behaviours of these individuals. Through the process of figural distortion, Masriadi implicitly places attention on the personalities and emotions of his figures, forcing the viewer to call into question the very egos of these obscure hyper-masculinised figures.

Bad Drama is a robust work that presents Masriadi’s continued intrigue into the human psyche and appetite to represent universal human flaws of greed, corruption and gluttony. Speaking of his love for video gaming and comic books, the artist incorporates a variety of these familiar motifs into his paintings, whilst rooting the work in an Indonesian context. Having depicted superheroes, warriors, and other fantastical figures on previous occasion, in this instance, Bad Drama sees the artist illustrate mischievous yet frightening characters that are presented in an entrapping and jarring composition. Through Masriadi’s adept figuration, from body language to hand gestures, he leaves clues that gradually reveal the true intentions of the three individuals, as the viewer further examines the work. Whilst the figure on the left garishly laughs, holding his stomach – weak with laughter, the man in the centre carries the same facial expression, but instead forms a circle with his thumb and index figure – possibly inferring that a monetary exchange has occurred. The figure on the right harmoniously mirrors the character on the left, and presents a thumbs down motion, signifying that their opponent has succumbed to defeat. Although Masriadi depicts his subjects as menacing and aggressive, he makes a mockery of these individuals by dressing them in child-like, ill-fitting clothing. From the bubble gum pink singlet, the cobalt blue watch, to the backwards baseball cap, Masriadi’s inclusion of these juvenile motifs all serve to lampoon and soften these supposedly hardy masculine men, indicating that they are not as dangerous as they first appear. In a sense, Masriadi’s painting stands as a visual double-entendre; in one instance it sees the three men mocking the viewer through their domineering stature, but simultaneously, the work also showcases the artist, ironically, mocking the three supposedly derisive characters through their material appearance. The sparse symbols of materialism – the watch, the ring – that these men bear somehow jump from the canvas, and are made visible through their plasticky colouration that work to contrast against their charcoal skin. Masriadi’s use of colour clearly draws to the eye which is important to his commentary, and the use of aun-aun creates a temporal shift that causes the piece to transcend the here and now.

Masriadi often leaves coded drawings and sparse inscriptions dispersed around the canvas. In Bad Drama he employs a traditional Balinese Kamasan technique called aun-aun, through which vacant spaces of a painting are filled up with motifs and decorative elements. Such additions to the work were done in accordance with the Balinese belief that there is no such concept of an empty space. By adopting this painting methodology, Masriadi’s placement of these inconspicuous marks serve to form a sense of ambiguity that could in fact reference something hidden or more sinister in the work. Through his sketches of everyday objects from a mug, a plane, a clock, scissors, an umbrella, to a ball, Masriadi captures the various elements that constitute the material world in which we inhabit. These rebellious markings, for the artist, can be viewed as poignant yet comical comments on Indonesian modernity and human civilisation. Upon examining these minute scribbles, Masriadi in an obscure manner, gives us more visual clues about the three male subjects. The alphabet letters in bubble lettering on the left of the canvas, the propeller perched on top of the baseball cap, along with the text that reads ‘MAMA MAMA’ situated on the tongue of the purple shirted man, all point to the infantile and childish qualities of the characters. There are also ambiguous messages that Masriadi leaves for the viewers’ interpretation, ‘BAD DRAMA OR BED DRAMA’ printed at the top of the canvas could at once be an internal dialogue the artist is having, or perhaps a Freudian slip revealing the unstated subconscious feelings of his subjects.

Fresh work to the market, Bad Drama is a powerful work that perfectly distills Masriadi’s mastery and technical skill: the juvenile connotations of figurative distortion are masked by his mastery of light and shadow, which gives the canvas a three-dimensional presence. Through the use of irony and parodic elements Bad Drama draws on real socio-cultural tensions that exist within the artist’s life, a commentary on local experience, within an ever-globalising world. Hence, the work asks us to question beyond the paint: who are these figures, what do they represent, and where is the culture of which they’re a product going? Understanding his subtle cues allows for Bad Drama to become part of the Rosetta Stone of how an Indonesian sees their nation in this ever-shrinking world.