Art of Asia is no longer in need of a mere discovering of new artists, but increasingly becomes capable of receiving attention from the position of playing a vital part in the development of a new global contemporary culture. Contemporary art spaces and galleries play an important role in this new development, particularly when they take on great responsibility in working closely with artists on a long-term basis, by offering them unremitting support for developing their work in a discursive and critically engaged environment, and by setting up structures that will allow their work to become appreciated within an international setting. Since its founding in 2005, BIASA ArtSpace has grown out to play an important role in fostering some of the most significant new developments in Indonesian Contemporary Art, and working closely with prominent emerging artists and curators to help ascertain a new introduction to contemporary art in Indonesia now.
Brief History of BIASA ArtSpace
The construction of the space to act as a territory and a showcase for Indonesian Contemporary Art was a natural response of the gallery’s owner, Susanna Perini, to her early encounters in the late 1990’s with young artists living and working in the island of Jawa, and particularly in Yogyakarta.
BIASA ArtSpace was then established with the intent to expose the existence of art communities and progressive individual evolution of selected Indonesian artists to widely diversified international public who walks the crossroads of Bali island.
The gallery building, designed by Italian architect Giovanni D’Ambrosio, has now become a distinct container where artists are invited to dialog and interact with its strong character. The exhibitions staged at the gallery have progressively become a reference point in the development of Indonesian Contemporary Art as a reflection of the challenge to express valid “glocal” cultural significance within a fast transforming environment.
What The Gallery Presents
Since the first year of its establishment, the gallery has worked with numerous artists, art and government institutions, that of national and international. BIASA ArtSpace has been the host to many group and solo exhibitions, bringing together Indonesian and international artists from different age groups, backgrounds and training. The gallery has presented works through solo and group exhibition from artists such as Jumaldi Alfi, Matteo Basilé, Enzo Cucchi, Heri Dono, Indieguerillas, Samuel Indratma, Budi Kustarto, Kirsty Ludbrook, Mondo Zanolini, Sara Nuytemans, Arya Pandjalu, Yuli Prayitno, Angki Purbandono, Astari Rashjid, Saftari, Kokok Sancoko, FIlippo Sciascia, Farhan Siki, Ugo Untoro, Made Wianta, Yunizar, and many others.
Early in 2010, the gallery released its first bilingual semesteral publication, Seni Kontemporer, which principally aimed at Indonesian academics and students. Each number will present important international surveys and essays on art translated in Indonesian and English Language. Seni Kontemporer was born from the necessity to encourage an intellectual exchange between Indonesian and International artistic meaning production. Its first volume, presents an essay “Art Beyond The Year Two Thousand”, written by Achille Bonito Oliva, an art critic and art history professor at the Sapenza University in Rome.
Prior to the publication, BIASA ArtSpace with 2RC Edizioni d’Arte supported a three city exhibition, The Doublefold Dream of Art, which was produced by the Italian Embassy and the Italian Institute of Culture in Jakarta.
BIASA ArtSpace’s endeavor is to generate an original platform for debate, an alternative space that could constitute a stimulus as well as a free port for both the art practice and the provision for means directed at socio-cultural understanding and projection. This means, in Indonesia specifically, and in Asia broadly, an actual ineluctable necessity that needs to be (re)defined completely anew in the context of transnational experience aimed at featuring social and individual identity. Thus, BIASA ArtSpace points at becoming an alternative window intended to redirect and inspire both local and global galleries, and institutions which purpose in the achievement in building networks and dynamics where the cooperation between art and other cultural, social, and political disciplines can reify both a creation and a creative tension. BIASA ArtSpace is not thereby conceived as an exclusive player, for its primary intention and goal is to share and spread, what is today defined as the “horizontal exchange” between the practice of art and the human “glocal” effect.
BIASA ArtSpace
Jl. Raya Seminyak 34
Kuta 80361, Bali, Indonesia
t. +623618475766
f. +62361730766
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