Counterpoint for Two Signatures by Hanafi and Goenawan Mohamad
Great news for art lovers! In mid of September 2019, Komaneka Fine Art Gallery will hold an exhibition entitled Counterpoint for Two Signatures. In this exhibition, Komaneka Resort invited famous artists Hanafi and Goenawan Mohamad to show their passion through art. They will collaborate to produce slick and attractive artwork.
For their project 57 x 76, Hanafi and Goenawan Mohamad (GM) agreed to work with a special procedure: Hanafi would start with painting on canvas or paper, and then give it to GM to continue. And vice versa: GM would submit paper or canvas that he had painted for Hanafi to respond to. The two artists worked for several months beginning in November 2016, and the process resulted in more than two hundred paintings and drawings, in addition to several installation designs that will be realized at the National Gallery. Only once or twice were Hanafi and GM involved in ‘painting together’ in one place. Most of the works in this project were finished in their respective studios, without coming face-to-face with each other. Completion of a sheet of paper or canvas most often took place in one round. There are only a few works in this project that went back and forth between Hanafi and GM, until both of them agreed that the work was truly ‘finished’.
The idea for the 57 x 76 collaboration project arose spontaneously from Hanafi after he saw the works in GM’s solo exhibition, Kata, Gambar, at DiaLoGue (2017). Hanafi and GM have known each other for a long time, and are even good friends. Hanafi once asked the GM to write an introduction and open his solo exhibition Of Spaces and Shadows (2009). He admires GM as an essayist and literary figure who has contributed greatly to the development of arts and cultural activities in Indonesia. For Hanafi, the initial motive in this project was experimentation. Here, experimentation is posited not only as a path to the process of creation itself; it is not different from it. “Experimentation and creation are the same”, Hanafi says. In all his experience of painting, Hanafi has never felt that there was a work that ‘failed’. He values painting as the accumulation of authentic moments in a specific space, the result of a process that cannot be repeated.
57 x 76 is indeed not a project that follows the latest trends in contemporary collaboration practices. If in ‘community based art’ projects—just call it that—there is a push to dismantle the subject of artists as ‘center’, and to place ‘public’, ‘community’, or ‘viewers’ as an active part in the process of creating artistic, in the collaboration of Hanafi and GM we are still focusing on the process of creation between the two artists. However, when compared with spontaneous/impromptu collaboration between artists (for example, in ‘joint painting’ activities, where two or more artists paint together on one canvas and are watched by many as a kind of ‘demo’ or performance), 57 x 76 has a number of specific singularities.
Two signatures on each piece of work in this exhibition confirm the presence of two individual artists. However, the work method they adopted actually indicates that this collaboration project will ultimately destabilize each other’s identity of authorship. Both Hanafi and GM as individuals no longer have full authority to speak of the ‘meaning’ or intent of each work. Yet again, we can guess who is working on horizontal lines and who the vertical. But, what is the importance of identifying the character of the lines with one of the artists? Enjoying the works in 57 x 76 is more like listening to a counterpoint: the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour—or more simply, the result of a juxtaposition of a series of tones of two or more voices presented simultaneously.
Two signatures on each piece of work in this exhibition confirm the presence of two individual artists. However, the work method they adopted actually indicates that this collaboration project will ultimately destabilize each other’s identity of authorship. Both Hanafi and GM as individuals no longer have full authority to speak of the ‘meaning’ or intent of each work. Yet again, we can guess who is working on horizontal lines and who the vertical. But, what is the importance of identifying the character of the lines with one of the artists? Enjoying the works in 57 x 76 is more like listening to a counterpoint: the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour—or more simply, the result of a juxtaposition of a series of tones of two or more voices presented simultaneously.
Do not miss this chance and come join us at the opening of our exhibition Counterpoint for Two Signatures on September 15th 2019 at Komaneka Fine Art Gallery. This exhibition will be on going from mid-September 2019 to mid-October 2019.