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Lot Essay
Born in 1973 in Padang, West Sumatra, Rudi Mantofani studied sculpture at the Indonesian Institute of Arts (ISI) in Yogyakarta from 1993 to 1996. Together with four other Padang artists who had come in the early 1990s to study art in Yogyakarta - Yunizar, Yusra Martunus, Jumaldi Alfi and Handiwirman Saputra - Rudi Mantofani formed the Kelompok Seni Rupa Jendela, or Jendela Group for short, in 1993. During a time when art-making was strongly influenced by socio-political exigencies, the group marked their emergence in Yogyakarta presenting artworks which bore no apparent conceptual or visual linkages with the turbulent realities of 1990s Indonesian political and social life.
The imageries employed in Rudi Mantofani's visual world reveal such an orientation. Realistically rendered as they may be, the visual elements in his canvases and the body of three dimensional objects are set apart from daily life by little more than a subtle suggestion of the deconstruction of meaning. During the mid-2000s, Mantofani increasingly turned from painting abstract all-over canvases to painting objects as metaphors of symbolic expression.
Pohon Pagi (Tree in the Morning) (Lot 476), a semi-abstract white-on-white painting of a tree is typical of his constant attempts to find new, pared-down metaphors of symbolic expression: a rock, a twisted string, a sliced fruit, often juxtaposed, Dali-esque, against vast, hauntingly barren landscapes. His works alternated between surrealism and abstraction, frequently conjoining the two disparate modes into a perspective entirely unique to the artist.
Terbelah Hijau (Lot 475) reflects Mantofani's search for visual metaphors and original pictorial schemas to present distilled lessons in life's conduct and thoughts. A veiled message of caution, or an adage to expect the unexpected is perhaps the message conveyed by the work. Intently and meticulously, Mantofani deliberates over the elements of his artworks - the painted object, composition and title - always with the objective to convey a narrative, or more accurately, a parable to his viewers.
The imageries employed in Rudi Mantofani's visual world reveal such an orientation. Realistically rendered as they may be, the visual elements in his canvases and the body of three dimensional objects are set apart from daily life by little more than a subtle suggestion of the deconstruction of meaning. During the mid-2000s, Mantofani increasingly turned from painting abstract all-over canvases to painting objects as metaphors of symbolic expression.
Pohon Pagi (Tree in the Morning) (Lot 476), a semi-abstract white-on-white painting of a tree is typical of his constant attempts to find new, pared-down metaphors of symbolic expression: a rock, a twisted string, a sliced fruit, often juxtaposed, Dali-esque, against vast, hauntingly barren landscapes. His works alternated between surrealism and abstraction, frequently conjoining the two disparate modes into a perspective entirely unique to the artist.
Terbelah Hijau (Lot 475) reflects Mantofani's search for visual metaphors and original pictorial schemas to present distilled lessons in life's conduct and thoughts. A veiled message of caution, or an adage to expect the unexpected is perhaps the message conveyed by the work. Intently and meticulously, Mantofani deliberates over the elements of his artworks - the painted object, composition and title - always with the objective to convey a narrative, or more accurately, a parable to his viewers.