Pleasures of Chaos
By Jim Supangkat

In this exhibition, Heri Dono only presents paintings. He is indeed an artist who paints consistently, although he more frequently presents installation works in his exhibitions. In his paintings, the comics-inspired lines form images and sensually sail over the smooth, well-composed colors.

All Heri Dono's paintings are pleasant to behold because through the paintings he wants to convey stories, just as a comic artist tells stories through pictures. There are no signs that Heri Dono wishes to present certain representation through visual compositions or to propose certain reflections based on philosophical ideas.

In Heri Dono's perceptions, paintings have now been detached from art discourses. He thinks that his paintings can be taken as equal to any art expression and he never considers paintings as a special medium of expression. Since early on in his career, Heri Dono would paint just as he would make parchment puppets for shadow puppet performances, where the puppets can be seen as shadows on the screen, or as the painted pieces of parchment that they are if we watch them from behind the screen.

One of his works in this exhibition, titled Contemporary Theatre, reveals such a symptom. The theatricality that he conveys through the depiction of a street theater performance reflects the tendency of his works. In his installation works, video works, and performance art works, one can always perceives such a tendency.

Heri Dono deliberately tries to detach art and art expressions from the institutional constellation of art infrastructure. He believes that the contemporary art is a part of the contemporary culture. For Heri Dono, art is about the artist's sensitivity, which has to do with matters of the sense and morality. Therefore, art expressions contain reflections that are based on socio-cultural matters but with a specific context.

Heri Dono thus believes that the contemporary culture contains traces of ethnicity, signifying how traditions are still pertinent today. At the same time, the contemporary culture reflects how globalization makes everyday living seems everywhere the same - just as the modernists have predicted. The expressions in Heri Dono’s works never fail to show how the two paradoxical matters collide.

We can safely say that paradoxes are invariably present in all Heri Dono's works, perceivable in an assortment of peculiarities. In The Great Dummy, Heri Dono depicts seven arms proffering money and seven heads with tongues sticking out, licking the money proffered. Then there are three TV sets neatly set on a base, with three rifles protruding from the screens. Below are three uniform figures with arms held out, certainly shouting a similar yell. In a central position, Heri Dono presents The Great Dummy: a masked dummy smoking a pipe, with a pair of blank eyes staring out.

With the painting, he talks about the power of money as reflected in corrupt and power mongering practices that take place in all layers of the society in Indonesia. Heri Dono also talks about the spread of violence in almost all sectors of life - from petty extortion in traditional markets, physical attacks due to differences in faith and religions, to the use of underground gangs to construct political power. Even the mass media, which should actually function as a pillar of democracy and freedom of expressions, are used to do character assassinations for some political and even personal interests. Meanwhile, the great dummy in the painting insinuates the death of the intellectual tradition and criticism, which then gives rise to identical views, mass tyranny, and collective folly.

In Heri Dono's works, the social commentary does not contain any ideology and neither does it seek any sociological conclusion. Rather, it relies on the belief which he calls "the upside-down mind". By thinking in reverse, he feels that the craziness and chaos that he faces everyday in Indonesia would seem normal.

The reversed thinking in Heri Dono's views does not pertain merely to social and political matters. Heri Dono perceives everything in life using this concept. His paintings, An Angel with Two Clowns, The Protectors, and The God Must Be Not Crazy, talk about the mundane things in life. He talks about love that fails in the face of poverty, folly, and power. He talks also about the mental corruption among the officers' broods, brought up with luxuries from corrupt practices. Such a mental corruption becomes a significant cultural corruption due to the large number of government officials, members of the military, and members of the parliament—the groups of rich people aside from the traders.

In facing the seemingly chaotic life, Heri Dono does not become gloomy because he sees things in playful eyes. He seems to be just like a child who sees the world in cheerful eyes, perceiving the games in front of him full of excitement and glee. Such a symptom has been apparent since the beginning of his artistic career. In the development of his works, such a symptom is apparent in his artistic concept of exploring the world of the puppet theater, cartoons, and comics to find his language of expression.

His work, Attacking a Magician, is actually presenting a serious question - why do shamans no longer exist today? To convey it, however, Heri Dono seems to be simply lining up pictures of his toy collection to construct a drama. In the paintings of The Spaceman and Robot Tracers, his playful tendency appears more clearly. It would be very interesting if one creates a video game from these paintings. Behind them, however, lies a very serious matter. Robots and superheroes are symbols that Heri Dono often employs to convey stories about the desire to power, the practices of violence from the petty to the grave ones, militarism, social engineering, and logic-destroying uniformity.

Heri Dono's expressions can be read as expressions that do not seek any form of order and neither do they use certain orders as a standard. On the contrary, he thinks that one must faces the condition of disorder, instead of trying to find a way out. In contemporary life, however, order cannot be avoided. Order lies at the bases of all systems, structures, conditions of balance, and categories. Order is also the basis for the modern goal, and is reflected in the democracy, justice, the balance of political power, and the welfare of the society. The undemocratic, unjust, unstructured, and opaque conditions all point to a condition of disorder, which according to the modern philosophy must be changed into order.

Heri Dono's proximity with the world of traditions makes him believe in equilibrium. This equilibrium is not a static condition; rather, it changes all the time. Within the equilibrium, there are internal dynamics in which new imbalances are continuously created and replaced by new balanced conditions.

Heri Dono celebrates such a view. The various paradoxes and contradictions he presents in playful tones are not merely in celebration of disorder. These expressions bring the condition of disorder to the level of chaos. The multitude of peculiarities in Heri Dono's expressions reveal pleasures that emerge from the imaginary condition of chaos. They are thus the pleasures of chaos.

One can use the theory of entropy to read Heri Dono's artistic expressions. The theory was developed in early twentieth century, based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The theory does not believe in permanently stable condition of order and sees that nature basically prefers disorder. The root of this view was the discovery in physics which shows that during the process of heating, a substance changes into another substance, and energy and disorder are formed. Entropy is used to measure the level of disorder during the process of change.

With entropy, one can analyze the condition of disorder, finding out whether it is in its early or final stage. In a condition of maximum disorder, a condition of chaos arises, signaling the critical point at which the substance changes. In the entropy theory, the condition of chaos signifies the point at which the disorder reaches its maximum, and the system is thus brought to equilibrium. Such a view sees that disorder lies at the bases of all things and cannot be avoided.

Such a view was marginalized by modernism in the twentieth century and now re-appears and is accepted because the modern world has shown various signs of disorder. Various conditions of order experience disharmony and degradation due to the clash of orders. The theory of entropy sees such a condition as natural and one should not worry too much about it.

Heri Dono's works seem to justify such a view. He faces the modern life in Indonesia where clash of orders is frequently found and improbabilities abound, due to the confusions in the application of the modern systems. The disorders give rise to multiple crises and protracted anxiety because one can never actually see the way out. Heri Dono's expressions betray visionary optimism that believes in changes, and Heri Dono reveals a "nothing to lose" attitude - whatever comes from these changes, it must certainly be better than the chaotic condition of today.

Heri Dono's expressions are light-years away from complaining about improbabilities. On the contrary, they actually betray the belief in probability. The meaning behind these artistic expressions might remind us to the song, "Deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome... someday."

Jim Supangkat
Curator

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