Transitory Nature of Earthly Joy by Albert Yonathan Setyawan

*Plant reaching the boundaries of its enclosed world*

There is so much inspiration to be taken from the cycle of life. Every second, something moves, even if we don’t perceive it. While some might argue Time is a social construct, progression is the evidence of our ongoing existence.

Albert Yonathan Setyawan’s work has always had this stoic quality about it that quietens your soul when you approach it, almost as if any unnecessary movement might disturb the unseen energy flowing between his ceramic forms. Our state of awareness is subtly heightened as we are physically dwarfed by the presence of hundreds of ceramic objects crafted by the artist’s hands. What transpires in the space between us? ‘Transitory Nature of Earthly Joy’ is no different; except now there is a movement in the space. Not from us, but from the works.

‘Transitory Nature of Earthly Joy’ at Tumurun Private Museum in Surakarta (Solo) City runs from 8 June 2024 to 12 January 2025. At the point of my visit, the exhibition has been in progress for more than 3 months. Time of visit is seldom a point of concern for visitors, yet here, as the name of the show suggests, your encounters with the work at any point in time presents them in a different state of being. The artist recommends visiting the exhibition more than once to experience their transformations during the 7 month period.

While I was lucky enough to view several of Setyawan’s monumental installations during his survey exhibition “Capturing Silence” in Jogja National Museum (Yogyakarta) last year, those who have missed the show can observe several of his installations and paintings in the collection of the museum on the first floor. Even having seen it before, one cannot help but marvel at its immensity and combined weight of each ceramic piece that might fit in a palm. The presentation of these prior works provide a good context for the transition to the new works, contained in the second floor gallery space.

The 12 new works are an expansion on a previous iteration at the aforementioned exhibition last year, in which 2 urns made of raw clay and other organic material were presented in a clear case containing a controlled environment, encouraging growth in the seeds buried within. The presentation has since been altered to tremendous effect; the source of the water for these individual encased worlds are now almost invisible and the objects sit atop a bed of soil, giving the impression that a slice (or rather, square) of life in the natural world has been carefully removed and contained within clear walls. The sense of witnessing the movement of life becomes more palpable as we put our noses up to the glass foggy with condensation, an inch away from the pill bugs scurrying away with their lives.

First iteration of ‘Transitory Nature of Earthly Joy’ at ‘Capturing Silence’ exhibition in Jogja National Museum in 2023. A tube feeds water through the case which contains the urn, looking like an artefact more than the installations echoing life in the new works.

One understands ceramic as only being complete after the firing process; Setyawan challenges this notion of permanence expected of this ancient medium with his explorations into the destruction— or in this exhibition, undeliberate alteration— of the clay vessel. His video artwork titled ‘Transitory Nature of Earthly Joy’ in 2017 hints at this curiosity to invoke a sense of impermanence using a method that is uncontrollable (in this case, water), having to let go of the tendency to pursue a ‘perfect’ final piece that most who work with mediums of craft origins find pride in. This does not suggest a lack of precision or inadequacy in craftsmanship however; destroying only an object made with care and achieving a certain standard (something fragile, and innocent) evokes that fleeting sense of regret and reflection about the ephemeral quality of life.

*Video Still from Transitory Nature of Earthly Joy, 2017. © Albert Yonathan Setyawan. Image courtesy of the Artist and Mizuma Gallery. Image taken from:* *Monsoonsea.org*

In this iteration in 2024, the vessels do not cease to exist completely, but instead presented in an ever-changing state without a final form. The artist acts as an initiator of this ecosystem, involved only with its genesis; the form carries on with life, proliferating in unexpected ways that surprises even its creator.

As an artist who also uses the method of destruction to alter the state of ‘mono-material’ vessels created by hand (in my case, using fire and crochet), I relate strongly with this curiosity that extends beyond the form and technical satisfaction of a piece resulting from precision and control. While our motivations for destruction are different, I find the surprise from the unpredictability of the involvement of a force larger than ourselves (namely, Nature) liberating. Artists and Craftsmen largely differ in that the former sometimes struggle to control the flux in their emotions and expressions; the latter, with letting go of control. In the position of artist practicing in the realm of craft, the balance of control requires immense consciousness to the medium and the voice, which I feel Setyawan has done beautifully.

The new artworks have extended beyond vessels; objects from religious altars familiar to frequenters of Buddhist shrines or temples make up the installations, and is Setyawan’s most obvious reference to a particular entity yet. While his previous iteration in 2023 used urns inspired by those to store ashes post-cremation and hinted at ideas of death and the afterlife, the inclusion of ritualistic objects such as candles, oranges, and a figure of the Bodhisattva is a clear sign to us that the artist is considering the beliefs of the Buddhist religious tradition.

“I have chosen these objects because I think they are a clear and poignant representation of the belief of the afterlife... these objects are usually built to last, commonly believed as representing the connection between our world and the world of the ancestors or the spirits, are juxtaposed using materials that will not last and will continually change over time.”

— Albert Yonathan Setyawan, June 2024. Exhibition Text

While we are in the gallery, a slight earthquake tremor causes a quiver; the lamps shake slightly, and the water in beneath the works ripples, despite being in an enclosed tank. We are momentarily shaken from the solemn atmosphere of the gallery, by yet another phenomenon we have no control over. I was struck by how little we seemed at the moment, powerless, just like the bugs and microscopic organisms living within these isolated worlds, experiencing that tremor on a different scale.

I admire the genius of artists who manage to replicate life in the gallery, forcing us to observe and reflect upon the most common and natural phenomenons surrounding us, and which we can so conveniently ignore. Would we normally want to be this close to life, in daily life? Would we want to put our noses so closely to the soil, stare so closely at patches of fungi, if we could smell it? Removing some of the perhaps uncomfortable physical sensations ironically allows us some mental space to access questions of existentiality, rather than just living it.

At times, the work is obscured by the condensation on the glass; frustratingly elusive. We make out a silhouette behind that fog. That inability to clearly perceive nettles the modern human, used to certainty and focus in life and on your screen; this time, this lack of control is experienced by the viewers. This work is meaningful in that it does not tell us what to think, or what it thinks; it just is. We are forced to contemplate the starkness of life and its state of impermanence by putting a glass between us and ‘it’, becoming an observer from the ‘outside’.

This exhibition also includes 3 ceramic installations that are recognizably Setyawan’s; I conclude my visit with the long line of Bodhisattva figures lining one wall of the gallery. Quite small and subtle, I am drawn to it only after repeated observations of the clay-and-soil installations so extraordinarily still yet bustling with life; the Bodhisattva figures are oddly stark and inert after witnessing the wilderness of plants and decay. Yet, walking from one end to the other, you see the barely-there smoothness of an indistinguishable figure gain detail, and it dawns on you the cleverness of the artist at being able to express movement, growth, and transition through objects that by themselves, are in a permanent state.

*Ceramic figures on the far-right end of the installation*

*Ceramic figures on the far-left end of the installation*

I believe that artists are translators for the voice within into their medium of expression. The notion of time and progression is difficult to express with with sculpture— something so solid, wordless, and permanent seems to tell you nothing and everything all at once. Setyawan has employed video as a medium in the past, to present the ‘lifetime’ of his vessels as they moved between states of being. In this exhibition, the transition is experienced through the point of active observation, and not through the mode of presentation, which hands the autonomy to the viewers. Watching a video makes us aware we are in the state of witnessing something outside of ourselves; this engagement instead brings forth awareness that what we are observing exists in our very lives.

The Banquet (Exhibition Essay)

This essay was first published online on The Banquet’s website, for the solo exhibition of visual artist AMIEN in July 2023, produced by Kelly Limerick and involving 5 artisans and a musician in an alternative mode of presentation.

Text by Kelly Limerick

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

— Carl Jung

The Banquet depicts characters caught up in the bustle of the daily grind, involuntarily gravitating towards an inconceivable force visually represented by a black, spherical mass. Taking inspiration from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of the Id, Ego and Superego, AMIEN creates personas representing these different roles, seeking a semblance of balance in the Universe as they play out their parts like clockwork in the confines of their comfort zone, adrift in a sea of the subconscious; all in spite of the urgency to face the elephant in the room as the fabric of reality begins to split with the expanding black mass.

The black mass does not have a fixed identity, and is represented by a ● symbol; in writing, plural tenses are deliberately used to refer to the mass as a second person pronoun, yet it represents an entirely new entity aside from ‘you’— the reader. Who exactly are ●? This mass takes on different identities for each and every person; a manifestation of avoidance that we will have to confront in time. What is this darkness we fear, and instinctively refuse to face? While it is death that ultimately claims us all, it is also the knowledge of this fact that motivates us to seek meaning during our time on Earth.

‘I’ refers to the ‘self’; a first person perspective, yet not necessarily representing singularity. In this Universe, different iterations of the self are bonded by an unsaid law, each resolutely carrying out their individual tasks. The differences in the appearances as well as behaviour of each character echo the varying facets within each human being; while conflict might arise, they ultimately converge into a single frequency: the self.

Growing up in the digital age, AMIEN recognises digital art as a current and relevant medium of our generation. While artists now struggle between remaining purists of traditional art and suffusing all kinds of new mediums into their work, AMIEN chooses to embrace both, propagating knowledge from tradition, and combining it with techniques relevant to our age.

Believing in maintaining a balance between what has been and what is to be, the artist’s oeuvre reflects a marriage between traditional and modern motifs, drawn from his exposure to different cultures growing up in the melting pot of Singapore– yet not a particular one. He expresses that he avoids direct pictorial references, and instead begins the process by daubing colours on a canvas, then refining the details drawn from his subconscious memory. Allowing the colours and emotions to lead his brush, building layer upon layer, he carves out a new path with each new stroke. He considers this style of painting ‘freeing’ as he responds actively to each moment; no one definite truth exists.

While his artworks are woven through with absurdity, the overlap with our human world allows us to develop an empathy for these characters that look so much like us. In the pandemonium, each character is lost in their own personal struggles, swallowed in the chaos– a speck in the Universe. Blue skin and horns aside, the expressions of these characters as they toil on in their daily routines even in this dream- like state, remind us of ourselves– what am I truly working for, and what dwells in my personal shadows?

While AMIEN’s portfolio leading up to The Banquet has seen its fair share of surreal characters, his new work evolves from dainty, still portraits to an outbursting of vigour. Each character is captured in a moment of action with their surroundings hinting at their personal stories, evoking their emotions, ambitions and relationships beyond pleasing aesthetics. An obvious thread of fate ties them all together from painting to painting; a leap from the loose, lone figures of his prior work.

Beneath the richness and action of the scenes, AMIEN’s experience and obsession with the human form is evident in his vivid rendering of the details. A glint in the eye, a light flare throwing a face into relief, the softness or wrinkles of skin; the artist retains the lessons of traditional mediums and, beneath the surreal imagery, builds a strong base of realism. His evident mastery in balancing shadow and light breathes life into each scene; flames dance and almost crackle with a ferocity in Svakadar, as the harsh shadows lend power to the fire; Saya captures us not with her gaze but the sharpness of her bite into flesh, with the crisp line of a shadow cast across her face.

The curious meat plant in Saya, also making an appearance in Hvasa, first took root in AMIEN’s earlier works prior to the show. In The Banquet, the plant appears to be based on the Peaches of Immortality, a popular icon in Chinese art and a symbol of longevity. While motifs from various cultures within Asia and the physical features of the characters give this Universe its oriental impression, it is the use of straight lines in most pieces creating a linear perspective that reminds us of the uki-e genre of Japanese woodblock prints– which, incidentally, was created through a study of western conventions of perspective. AMIEN uses these lines to construct frames within frames, making the viewers peer at his characters through distant windows shrouded in secrecy.

The art world has given birth to countless new styles of work thanks to cross-cultural studies of art styles throughout history, and the spirit of innovation. The paintings are woven out of Asian threads, but subtle references to Western art break the monotony of the weft; in Aumirvasati, one cannot deny the presence of the traditional nude under the mint hue of skin with her eyes cast skyward, a characteristic of medieval art depicting religious faith. A shell forms her throne, a re-interpretation of the classic scallop shell in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.

Concluding the exhibition with the centrepiece Aunhir Mesa, one could be reminded of the ascension scenes in Christian art where characters coalesce around a rising central figure alight with a surrounding halo– except in inverse. In removing the central figure and the light that surrounds it, presenting us a gaping abyss, we are again made to question what we actually worship in life.

“There are two that make one: the world and the shadow, the light and the dark. The two poles of the balance. Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal? What is it but death– death without rebirth?”

— Ursula Le Guin, The Furthest Shore

In a city like Singapore where art might be considered non-essential, what exactly is the role of an artist? As artists struggle to define their identity and differentiate themselves from machines that convert your worded fantasies into images, they must remember that they are artists because they are making art, and not because they have made art. While A.I.-powered image generators make a beeline for the ‘perfect’ piece of art, humans stumble a hundred steps behind, encumbered by vines of self-doubt shackling their ankles– living a life worthy of a protagonist in literature. Perhaps, like how life and death are irrevocably bound to each other, the creation of machines that strive to be like us, our nemeses, serves only as an example of what we could be upon ignoring the thing that makes us human– our contradictions. What is Life without tragedy? As the Savage in Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932) proclaimed,

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin... I claim the right to be unhappy.”

Life after all, is a destination unknown. The artist walks on, every stroke becoming a step further into his own Universe, one even he has no answers to. He paints, because he wonders, and he wanders, because he paints. It is the same thing.

Artisan Collaborations

The chicken as a phoenix, the lobster as a dragon; homonyms have always been used by the Chinese to transform great mythological beings out of common beasts. Buried in the layers of the complicated Chinese language, the fanciful titles transform any humble, mortal dish into a symbol fit for the gods. The excessive nature of Chinese banquets and the obsession with the act rather than the intention resulting from it set the scene for The Banquet.

In this feast, it is for the symbol that the characters consume, and not nourishment. The table is set with ceramic wares created by local ceramicist Rei Minagawa (Un Studio) in response to AMIEN’s paintings, playing along the same threads of unfamiliarity within the familiar. Inspired by the sancai (three-coloured) ceramics of the Tang Dynasty, the vessels are suffused with a subtle regality; yet they remain warm with the nostalgia of the ceramicist, who introduces the greens of Oribe wares gleaned from her childhood memories of family dinners in a tiny neighbourhood izakaya in Japan.

Yet within them lies nothing but a curious glyph. Upon scanning these glyphs, which function as AR (Augmented Reality) markers with a smart device, the delicacies come into being on a different plane, bridging the ancient art of ceramics to our modern world. The bizarre dishes, created and sculpted by AMIEN with the help of web technologist Siah remain to be enjoyed only with the eyes, giving the vessels holding them a greater sense of physicality once we put our devices away.

*The Book from Before. Artwork: AMIEN, Book: Mandy Tan, Derrick Ng.*

At the core of it, who governs this Universe, if anyone at all? The Book from Before gives us a hint of the law in motion in a delicate illustration by AMIEN, inspired by ukiyo-e prints. Translated as ‘pictures of the floating world’, this Japanese genre of art usually depicts hedonistic pleasures of the mortal world, and are traditionally printed with carved woodblocks. We are able to imagine the process of this printing method by observing the assiduous craft of printmaker Derrick Ng on the carved covers of this codex, which also functions as a woodblock featuring the imaginary Sira script. Paper conservator Mandy Tan introduces an Asian influence with the accordion fold popular in ancient Chinese manuscripts, and by lining Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper on both sides with Chinese silk featuring phoenixes– the symbol of an Emperor– in flight. Made using the traditional wet-mounting method of Chinese scrolls, the book carries history in its supple yet crisp pages, which when joined end to end, forms a never-ending loop.

The story concludes on the Aunhir Mesa, the centre of the exhibition and this fantastical Universe. While the characters are being whipped away by the force of the black mass, the painting seems to be weighted down by the one thing holding it– the wooden frame that brings with it a sense of age and stability. Deceptively simple on the first look, subtle curves surface as you move around the frame. Contrasted against the darkness of the core of the painting, the wood— which had been ebonised and stained by Liuyang (Un Studio), flits delightfully between shades of charcoal and warm wood, revealed through a hand-chiselled texture. Organic and inconsistent, the trace of a crafter’s hands in its making gives this piece a convincing history.

Surrounding us with an intangible and invisible, yet unmistakable presence– a metaphor for the black mass– is a soundscape titled Swallow, by musician weish. The composition ushers us into a full immersion of this alternate Universe, conveying the joy and verve of the Banquet as it rages on in spite of a darker, looming entity.