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« JUJUR SABAR »
the projected lives of
NOVIADI ANGKASAPURA
17.05 — 06.07.2023
1 rue Elzévir, 75003 PARIS
THE EXHIBITION
To celebrate the encounter between pictorial surfaces and bodies in movement, LEMAIRE produced the first Parisian exhibition dedicated to Noviadi Angkasapura. « Jujur Sabar », the projected lives of Noviadi Angkasapura, brings together the drawings of the Indonesian artist and the clothes featuring them – from the LEMAIRE Spring-Summer 2023 collection – in the flagship store at 1 rue Elzévir.
In the continuity of its wardrobe irrigated by plural influences, LEMAIRE has been inspired by Angkasapura's palimpsest illustrations to create a series of graphic, airy and supple cotton pieces. Once worn and set in motion by the bodies, these garments bring Angkasapura timeless characters to life, echoing LEMAIRE's will to give a space of expression to singular artists.
NOVIADI ANGKASAPURA
Noviadi Angkasapura was born in 1979 in Jayapura, on the Indonesian side of the island of New Guinea. His parents, originally from Java, settled in this sparsely populated region where Angkasapura spent his childhood and adolescence surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and lush vegetation. Deeply marked by his environment, the animist imagination and the multicultural influences of the populations from neighbouring islands such as Borneo, Sulawesi, Sumatra, Bali or Madura, Angkasapura represents what surrounds him: chiselled rocks, traced rivers or sculpted tree trunks.
NOVIADI ANGKASAPURA CAPTURED AT HOME, IN JAKARTA, BY THOMAS SITO, 2023
« As a child, I loved to create endless patterns, imaginary figures, random numbers, capricious lines, ornate repetitions, etc. My notebooks were filled to the brim with drawings and dense compositions where the real and the imaginary danced with each other » he told gallery owner Randall Morris.
According to his own words, on the eve of his 24th birthday, Angkasapura was visited by an intercessory spirit. This spiritual power guides him, projecting his work into an uninterrupted creative flow. The act of drawing is a repetitive prayer as well as a form meditation and a means of conveying messages from this spirit.
In this equation, Angkasapura sees himself as a broadcaster and does not pretend to understand or explain the content of its drawings, done in biros, graphite or coloured pencil on small-format paper or cardboard. Their skeins of random lines, with wild silhouettes of demons, djinns and anthropomorphic creatures, are tirelessly crossed by the mantras KI RADEN SASTRO INGGIL and JUJUR SABAR, sinuous calligraphies instilling the virtues of honesty and patience.
Although inspired by various iconographic traditions – the Javanese wayang puppets, a popular shadow theatre in Indonesia, or the epic of the Râmâyana – the figures are never literally derived from these sources. In a diffuse temporality and a composition close to collage, Angkasapura merges East and West, styles and registers. Between ecstasy and turmoil, paradise and damnation, he sediments imprints – meteorological, geological, anatomical or astronomical. As if in an editing room or an augmented reality, the inner space of the drawing expands, the forms split, the lines vibrate and, before our eyes, in weightlessness, living portraits, diffracted visions or islands splashed from the sky emerge.
Noviadi Angkasapura now lives in Jakarta and makes a living from his creative activity, which allows him to support his family while dreaming of a future museum containing one million of his drawings. His work is exhibited in the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne. Angkasapura is also represented abroad by the Henry Boxer Gallery in England and Cavin-Morris in New York.
In the continuity of collections irrigated by plural influences, LEMAIRE has been inspired by Angkasapura's palimpsest drawings to create a series of cotton pieces.
