IVAN SAGITA: Death-Containing Life
JUNE 18 - JULY 29, 2005
CP ARTSPACE, JAKARTA
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Reality in the Works of Ivan Sagita
By Jim Supangkat

There is currently an exchange of opinions going on between adherents of realism and anti-realism. Between the philosophy of the phenomenologists, who are attempting to comprehend reality, and that of the "post-realist" thinkers, who perceive the meaning of reality as nothing of significance anymore within the world of thought.

This difference of opinions, which emerged in the second half of the 20th century, was triggered by the rejection of rational thought pioneered by Immanuel Kant at the end of the 18th century. This thinking, which was based in German idealism, became dominant and influential throughout two centuries in almost every sector of thought and scientific knowledge.

When Kant's concepts set out the spirit/soul as a transcendental ego, the position of mankind as individuals became central to the thinking on and comprehension of reality; while, the dynamics of all matter became frozen. Kant's concepts ended a philosophical tradition that set out both subject and object, body and soul, mind and matter, spirit and reality as having an equal tension. Kant sharply separated subject and object along with mind and matter - and this was the beginning of bipolar thought.

In Kant's thinking, the understanding of reality was the conceptualization of reality. This doctrine placed thinking in a very dominant position within the conceptualization of reality. Within this doctrine, thinking held a static and autonomous position. In the process of comprehension, there also took place an autonomous correspondence between the concept and the object. This correspondence was clear of influencing factors (in reality), which were outside of the concept and object interaction. The result was a concept believed to be objective (not influenced by changeable subjective experience), static and absolute.

The critical stance opposing that rational thought attacked the bi-polar, the either/or, which had become the basis for the formulation of concepts of reality in almost all areas of thought. These critical opponents found this kind of thinking to be far from actual reality due to its lack of consideration. This rational thinking simply gave rise to textual reality "within the realm" of language.

Other critical thinking saw the position of the individual as not being central and autonomous, but rather as ex-centric or not having a static center. Any field of meaning within the formulation of an understanding, without exception, would continuously undergo reconfiguration. Therefore, the concept of reality could never be static or objective. From this belief came the thinking that saw the meaning of reality as an insignificant matter within the world of thought.

In the midst of this debate, which expanded into all sectors of thought, emerged the idea of returning to the thinking of William James in relation to reality. The thinking of this philosopher of the 20th century was pushed aside by Kantian rational thought.

William James, who was best known for his controversial book titled A Pluralistic Universe (1909), was convinced that reality did not consist of only one substance. To William James way of thinking, reality was layered. Although dynamically related one to another, these layers indicated that reality was an amalgamation of a number of substances.

This pluralism, which developed widely within post-modern thought, succeeded in changing the perception of reality within the development of the world of thought. Pluralism was not thinking that promoted exclusive differences as some people think. Pluralism that emphasizes differences also emphasizes similarities. However, pluralism does challenge the influence of Kantian thinking, which believes in the essence of sameness.

At the end of his life, William James wrote a number of essays that reinforced his thinking, which he called "Radical empiricism". These essays had yet to be compiled in book form at the time of his death in 1910. Two years after he died, his most faithful student and follower, Ralph Barton Perry, gathered all of the essays together, organized and then published them in a collection of essays (Essays in Radical Empiricism, 1912 ).

In 1996, this collection of William James's essays re-emerged (William James - Essay in Radical Empiricism, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln-London, 1996). It cannot be denied that this book, which has been frequently reprinted, has colored post-modern thought. This indicates that reality remains a significant issue within postmodernist thinking and also within contemporary art.

William James's radical empiricism believed in "pure experience". Reality exists because it is experienced. Awareness of reality exists because of experience. He stated: "Everything that is real originates from an experienced event and all experience contains reality."

William James was certain that experience of activity was related to metaphysical thinking as well as epistemology. However, different from the epistemology in rational thinking, the "understanding of reality" within radical empiricism is not a concept and is in no way absolute.

The works of art in Ivan Sagita's solo exhibition at CP Artspace titled "Life Contains Death" ("Hidup Bermuatan Mati") makes an issue of reality. Even though he does not present it as an explicit awareness, Ivan Sagita, as it turns out, has set out on the "path" of William James within his exploration of the matter of reality.

Concerning his presentation of reality in his works, Ivan states, "Empirical observation constitutes the basis for my work as an artist, and this empirical observation provides a number of assumptions". Concerning (pure) experience as a source of thinking about reality, Ivan states, "There is a link between the body and its environment, the body does not stand on its own; the body is objectivity also within the reality, which we comprehend."

The concept of awareness in Kantian and Neo-Kantian thinking emphasizes the connection between mind and matter. Up until now, this is the most common method known within the consideration of the issue of reality. In radical empiricism, the understanding of reality is based on the relationship of subject-object, and the subject within this relationship cannot be separated from the relationship of body and soul.

The "body" in Ivan's statement, which is seen as "objectivity within the realm of reality", can be read as a sign of the subject-object relationship, which involves the body and soul in the comprehension of reality. Ivan explains that when he must work outside of his environment in Yogyakarta, he face the problem of the splitting apart of the subject, which is not limited by space, and the object, which is tied to a place. "My thinking and obsession experience a sense of incompleteness or a separation of body and soul," he said. Pinpointing the reason for this, he said, "My working process cannot be contained simply within the understanding of outside stimuli, or the perception of, or response to things outside of the subject."

Radical empiricism believes that specific experience can result in assumptions or conclusions. This tendency runs counter to Kantian and Neo-Kantian rational thinking, which seeks out principles in reality and applies those principles as absolute truths in relation to every detail of reality (the failure of this line of thinking is discovered when many of those assumptions cannot be applied to detailed reality). Radical empiricism, on the other hand, starting from the facts that appear through detailing reality, whose references are not yet clear in an effort to utilize the details of reality in order to develop universal principles.

The reality in Ivan's works is based in various specific personal experiences. On his canvases, it can immediately be seen that the reality he presents is that of the archipelago in which he lives, and even more specifically, the reality of the Javanese society in Yogyakarta. Even so, the assumptions about reality, which he set out, can be linked to thinking about humankind in a universal manner. A variety of the symbols appearing in his paintings, such as hair, body parts, faces, drapery, and unlimited space, are universal symbols.

Ivan's observations of reality in his works occur because of a series of experiences that are biographical in nature - the experiences of his lifetime. Ivan began painting at the age of 15, under the tutelage of the painter Bambang Sugeng in Malang, his hometown. It was at that time that he began to observe reality - following the most prevalent aesthetic tradition within the development of Indonesian art.

When he first started painting as a teenager, Ivan became interested in the activities in and around the Porong Mental Health Hospital in Lawang, which was not very far from where he lived in Malang. Ivan frequently visited that hospital and came to perceive the patients there as people who had been thrown away by society. For most of the patients, the hospital was their home, and because of their acute mental illnesses, it was not clear how long they would have to remain there. Ivan felt that these patients had been removed from their homes because their families felt annoyed and embarrassed by them. Some of them were left in the hospital to finish out their lives even though they had healed. (Surealism Yogyakarta, M. Dwi Marianto, Merapi, Yogya, 2001).

According to William James, empiricism becomes radical because a connection cannot be made between experience and the constructions of reality - developed through rational thinking - which were not directly experienced. In radical empiricism there is no relationship between experience and constructions of reality. The relationships within radical empiricism are the awarenesses that connect one experience with other experiences. This relationship, according to William James, also constitute experiences, as well as being components of understanding.

The views of William James are apparent in Ivan Sagita. Ivan is not trapped in the perception of mental health patients as constructions of reality. He does not enter into the scientific consideration of mental illness, nor does he question, for example, the boundaries between sanity and insanity. Ivan makes the experience of viewing the reality of the mental hospital a component of his comprehension of reality.

Later, once he had begun to live his own life and record any number of pressing experiences, such as being shoved aside, discriminated against, suspected and terrorized, he felt the relationship between his experiences of observation at the mental hospital and his own biographical experience.

From this understanding of the relationship of experiences, he became aware that were simply people that had lost their identities, their rights. They were people who had been set aside, discriminated against, and expelled from society due to circumstances beyond their control. Ivan became aware that the mental hospital patients were people who had failed to face life, who had lost because they were not able to stand up to the forces that held realm over them.

From relating his various experiences one to another, Ivan came to feel that he, himself, was one of the people who had failed, and who felt constantly haunted by a sense of insecurity. At one point he declared, "I often wonder what it is that controls a person, and how to reduce its absoluteness." Ivan did not bring this awareness into the realm of thinking with references in the (rational) thinking about the conflict between individuality and collectiveness, or about the tension between the ego and morality. He took this issue of reality - which he calls "thinking and obsession" - with him into an exploration of people who had lost.

The works of Ivan Sagita, as has been frequently discussed and set out in various publications, present the realities of life on the grassroots level within his own living space and way of life in Yogyakarta. In his paintings he depicts farmers, coolies and female street peddlers at the traditional markets, who work hard day in and day out just to survive. From his acquaintance with these people, he became aware that from generation to generation the members of this level of society had never been able to change their fate.

Ivan is not just observing a social realty then presenting social commentary in his paintings. His works present his reflections on perceiving grassroots society as defeated people. "These simple traditional people work hard to survive, as if they must simply accept what happens, live their lives in ways they do not desire in the face of uncertainty," he said. And Ivan is impressed by the old Javanese saying that has been passed down through the ages, "Life is just a brief sojourn, like stopping at a coffee house to rest after a long stint of travel."

The relating of diverse experiences has carried Ivan to the awareness that this saying reflects the life view that sees the reality of life as full of futility; as vain and useless. Within this dimension, life truly has no meaning other than simply surviving through a difficult and heavy life struggle. This saying also reflects that there is an awareness of death among the defeated. While life unfolds, there is also the consciousness that life will have an end: death. That life is just a moment within a long journey. This saying is a sign of awareness of mortality or material impermanence.

Ivan has stated that it is this transience, this impermanence that provides the framework for all the works he has created throughout his career. This informs the exploration and search for the dimensions of the life that bears death within it, which have become a lifetime project for Ivan Sagita. His paintings are endlessly ongoing efforts to delve into the experience and feeling of "life that contains death".

"I consistently experience the repetitive questioning in relation to my awareness of individuality, which carries me most quickly to lack of harmony in connection with the realm of material objects and the realm of subjective thinking," he said. This statement indicates that he is seeking a basis for beliefs through interaction between the subject and object - which Ivan, as reflected in this statement, sees as being on the same level and as equally dynamic. The belief referred to here is Ivan's perception of a "lack" of nihilistic space in reality.

This space will not appear in any portrait of reality, which emphasizes the reporting of reality as material. Although Ivan uses the painting techniques of realism, he is not copying reality onto canvases as is usually the case with paintings done with these techniques. Through his paintings, Ivan attempts to express nihilistic abstract space whose form is difficult to imagine.

Reality as a specific construction never appears in Ivan's paintings. When the components of reality do emerge in Ivan’s works, they appear fragmented and are presented in a condition that has no system. Even the figures in his paintings revolt against order. The illusive space that seems to appear without limit or boundaries in Ivan's paintings is not an actual space at all. This kind of space is the totality of space, which has the capacity to render even reality as nothingness.

In this exhibition, Ivan offers for view a hanging installation titled "Air Alir" , or "Water Flowing"". The installation is composed of small pieces of wood dangling down. On each piece of wood that has been honed down so that its surface is too small and narrow for an image, Ivan has placed the shape of a protruding eye. These pieces of wood, which have been reduced in size to a critical point, give a strong impression of the limitations of the material itself while associating those limitations with human pain. This impression conveys a strong "sense of the sublime". This work creates an intense feeling of the sublime.

In the world of art, sublimity is an expressive indication, which has never seen the end of analysis and exploration. In the classic understanding, sublimity is utilized to point out an artistic expression that offers the experience of the disappearance of fear and pain once that fear and pain have reached their limits. Immanuel Kant used the sublime to state that art not only offers beauty. Kant contrasted "sublimity" and "beauty". According to Kant, the expression of the sublime, which exhibits beauty as the achievement of the emotion of overcoming uncomfortable feelings - including those of pain and fear - is a much more complex beauty that the attractiveness that is based in loveliness. In post-modern thinking, Jean-François Lyotard saw the sense of the sublime as the motivating force for expressing things that had no channel for expression - "to present the unpresentable".

All of the expressions set forth in Ivan's works, on one level or another, offer the sublime. In his creative process, the sublime is an emotional condition, which maintains the spirit to set forth depictions of experiences, which, in reality, are painful and frightening.

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Further reading:
Transitory. Death-Containing Life, by Suwarno Wisetrotomo