Entang Wiharso: When Rabbits Eat Meat
"I can find solitude, hope, dreams, and pleasure in nature and my garden is a place where I empty my tired mind and where new ideas grow." -Entang Wiharso
The gallery is pleased to present Entang Wiharso: When Rabbits Eat Meat, an exhibition of new paintings and selected wall-mounted sculptures from the last decade. The current work created during the pandemic and the tumultuous political events of the intervening years focuses on themes related to migration, historical narratives, the power of identity and the idea of belonging. This will be Wiharso's third one-person exhibition with the gallery.
Reflecting on the exhibition, Wiharso writes:
"Living in the United States, getting to know the trees and plants was a way to connect and feel associated with my home here. Gardening was a way to learn how to survive. It allowed me to feel like I belonged and existed in this environment. During research that took me through the southern U.S. (North and South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) I discovered a lot of historical text and subtext from the environment and architecture, including agricultural processes and public monuments, as well as unmarked historical sites that are carried forward in the collective memory. Plants, flowers, and landscapes manifested through past actions and labor, are signs that express existence, heritage, and migration throughout history. After a visit to Charleston, South Carolina where a tour guide pointed out a tree in the middle of the city that had been used for lynching, I became obsessed with painting trees. In this context, trees serve as a rejection of that violence as well as a reminder of the dark history of slavery and the origin of hate towards people of color, which is still present in the social fabric of America today.
I developed my use of glitter because I am fascinated by the idea of an unfixed image. Glitter allows me to create lush, camouflaged surfaces in order to talk about malleable perception and presentation. The glitter and cartoon-like figures in these works mask darker, perhaps sinister, subjects in this body of work. I am interested in the uncomfortable juxtaposition between beauty, humor, and kitsch with pain, suffering, and fear. The strong association with craft creates a useful tension to speak about skewed perceptions of identity. The surface of these paintings buries information and deceives our eyes. They reflect a willingness to be blinded by comfortable explanations, a willingness to ignore evidence of danger and suffering in favor of pleasant thoughts. I want people to wonder, Is this a reflection of reality, or an exaggerated story?"
Born in Tegal, Central Java, Indonesia, Entang Wiharso lives and works in Rhode Island, USA and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Wiharso is a graduate of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (1994). Wiharso has had more than 45 solo gallery and museum exhibitions since 1995 across Asia, Europe and the United States and participated in numerous biennale exhibitions including the 2019 Kunming Art Biennale, Yunnan, China; Indonesian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale; Prospect.3 New Orleans, Prague Biennale 6 as well as in many prestigious international institutions including Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; National Gallery of Australia; Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY; Jeonbuk Museum, Jeonbuk, South Korea; Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia; Singapore Tyler Print Institute; Gunma Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan; Hilger Brotkunsthalle, Vienna, Austria; Singapore Art Museum; Galeri Nasional Indonesia; Lyon Musée d'art contemporain; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; National Gallery of Victoria; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Ithaca, NY; and most recently at the Asia Center, Harvard University, Boston, MA.
Selected public collections include Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Centro Videoinsight®, Turino, Italy; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Family Servais Collection, Brussels, Belgium; Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, Switzerland; Jeonbuk Museum, Jeonbuk, South Korea; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia; National Gallery of Singapore, Singapore; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Florida, USA; United States Embassy, Jakarta, Indonesia; Yogyakarta International Airport, Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Yunnan Art Museum, Yunnan, China; among others. Entang Wiharso is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and has participated in numerous residencies around the world.
