Indonesia is everywhere

Ami Amongsari's paintings present us with constantly changing images drawn from her Indonesian roots. It is as if the geographical distance between her and her home in Java acts as a catalyst in her work.

Ms Amongsari graduated at the Alanus Hochschule in Alfter/Germany with a theme which embodies the source of her artistic inspiration, the theme of the communal "long hut", as can still be found in its archaic form on the island of Borneo. In a series of remarkable paintings she documented the impressions of her experience living for several months in such a communal "long hut" in a Borneo village in 1994. In this series we can see her transcending the subjectivity of her personal experience to create a kind of archaic leitmotiv. While her earlier work was largely inspired by landscape, the focus now shifts to the human figure, both alone and in groups. Space is thereby transformed into an expression of the energy flowing between these figures. According to Ms Amongsari, the quality and colour of this space relates to the figures themselves and not the external surroundings in the communal hut. Indeed the latter is devoid of colourful flowers and lacks the striking colours which characterise her paintings. The aura of colour is an expression of the inner emotion of the figures. To European eyes these images are like insights into a long-lost paradise.

One of the key paintings in this series has a symmetrical composition. The eye of the beholder follows a colourful crowd of figures streaming towards the centre of the picture - the communal hut - which pulsates with contrasts of light and dark and of warm and cool hues. On either side, the central vibrancy of the picture is contained and enhanced by earth-coloured shields, which, together with a horizontal beam at the top of the picture, create a kind of frame, decorated with smaller shields and snake-head motivs. As a result, the picture loses its three-dimensional quality, and the "external" surrounding space becomes an expression of internal emotions.

Bearing in mind Ms Amongsari's Indonesian origins, it is striking that here we are confronted with a reversal of the familiar shift to two-dimensionality, which characterises a whole generation of European painters, who left the cold, dark regions of the north to find the warm bright colours of the south, as typified by Gaugin's Polynesian exile. It is as if her own "exile" from the climatic and social warmth of Indonesia act as a catalyst which generates the vitality present in her painting.

Other motivs from the Alanus series form the basis of new works. The snake-head above the hut is taken up again in a series called "Snake-head"(Weimar, 19999). It reveals another persistent trait of Ms Amongsari's work: spatial constriction, whether it be found in the social rigidity of certain aspects of life in Germany, or in the narrow communal hut, can become the very source and motor of creativity. These elements of constriction and rigidity are further heightened in a series entitled "Weimar Encounters" by the long, narrow format of the 8 paintings. The external format of these canvases strive, but do not altogether manage, to contain the vitality created by the overriding use of primary colours.

These pictures reflect biographical aspects of the artist's life and surroundings. The loss of familiar social structures which characterised life in Eastern Germany in the decade following the fall of the Berlin wall, is transformed by the profound warmth Ms Amongsari encountered in the close network of friendship she developed there. Thus it becomes clear that the leitmotiv of the Alanus series, in which figures inter-react in dynamic colours should not be seen as a hearkening back to a kind of archaic past paradise; the vibrancy of the hut in Borneo is to be found in the present time and place: Borneo is in Weimar, it is everywhere.

The creative dynamism of her work can be testified by the use of coloured earth, which Ms Amongsari has collected from different parts of Europe, and which she now uses to paint her pictures. In a new series called "Woven Earth"(2002) the constriction resulting from the format of the canvases is overcome by a stronger element of rhythm and musicality. The individual canvases become subservient to the overall impression of space and warmth which transcends the painted surfaces.

When asked whether she had collected earth from Indonesia, Ms Amongsari replied that she had - but that she had lost the bag on her travels: Indonesia is everywhere.

Jochen Breme
Alanus Hochschule - Alfter