The Sea is Calling

Honold Fine Art is pleased to present The Sea is Calling, the opening exhibition of Honold Fine Art in Bali, Indonesia, from 1–10 July 2016.

The first pop up show of Honold Fine Art introduces the artworks of four international artists: Jumaldi Alfi, Marco Cassani, Fendry Ekel and Filippo Sciascia as well as Honold Fine Art's profile: representing the work of international artists who employ a conscious and engaged practice and intertwine a conceptual attitude with an evenly strong attention for how the artwork is being crafted.

The Sea is Calling also inseminates the first two years of Honold Fine Art's program, exploring Bali’s environment by collaborating with different venues on the island. This distinguished approach specifically wants to reflect upon the concept the exhibition space in our contemporary society, exploring new ways and structures of presenting contemporary art.

For this occasion, Honold Fine Art partnered with the luxury boutique hotel Bisma Eight in Ubud as the first exhibition venue to host a show, looking at the hotel as a semi-public space. Within this context the artists decided to integrate the artworks into the environment of the hotel – hall, front office, lobby, cafe and suite room in particular – without modifying the interior, bringing the artworks to the limit aspect of decor.

Jumaldi Alfi has consistently been exploring new possibilities in painting. Over the past ten years his paintings have shown shifting themes and styles. He is particularly known for his compelling personal iconography of visual signs, reflecting existential and spiritual experience on both, an individual and collective level. ‘Jumaldi Alfi has long defied expectations of regularity in painting, challenging the notion that a painting must take the form of a rectangular plane placed flat against the wall. His paintings delineate functions of space, mark down intricate sequences of creative events and test the viewer’s fields of vision’. Thomas J. Berghuis, The Art of Looking in the Work of Jumaldi Alfi (Yogyakarta: Black Cat Publishing, 2016), 4

Through his practice, Marco Cassani questions certain emblems and social codes, in particular those linked to political and social power, using art as a ‘catalyst’. In doing so, Cassani has been involved in two projects: Kayu, the Balinese branch of Lucie Fontaine, who employed him in 2014 and VAPRICO, an artistic project structured as a commercial corporation of which the artist is CEO and founder. ‘Questioning not only the understanding what is means to be an artist today, this omnitasking position also triggers a larger discourse about the lack of distinction between labor and leisure (the very base of cultural production) while reaching its most paradoxical and therefore contemporary state only through positions similar to that of Cassani’. Nicola Trezzi, Indisciplinato (Yogyakarta: Black Cat Publishing, 2016), 5

Fendry Ekel has been dubbed a pictor doctus, who critically investigates the power of art, figuration and representation by appropriating iconic images from our collective memory. His multilayered monumental paintings after existing photographs explore the relations between man and memory. Along with painting Ekel creates readymades and a series of mirror pieces. ‘Just as a spacecraft jettisons its own parts piece by piece in order to arrive at a planned destination despite the pull of gravity, Fendry Ekel discharges painting from its burden of first-degree representation’. Astrid Honold, 1987: Man and Memory (Yogyakarta: Black Cat Publishing, 2016), 16

Filippo Sciascia is an artist fascinated by the way society absorbs and understands the production and consumption of images as a form of reality. He explores this fascination through painting, sculpture, photography, film and video technologies. ‘In a land seething with tangles of ancient Gods while at the same time being torn to pieces by the most venal infestations of 21^st century boom-boom Asian capitalism, this friend (Filippo Sciascia) offers a clear level voice of free progressive thought and splendid aspiration amidst the din.’ Ashley Bickerton, Matahari, (Yogyakarta: Black Cat Publishing, 2016), 5

The show is accompanied by a publication of each artist by Black Cat Publishing.