Installation view of ANGKI PURBANDONO‘s "If You Give Me Lemon, I’ll Make Lemonade: Tales from Tokyo and Tangkahan" at Mizuma
Gallery, Singapore, 2017. Courtesy the artist and Mizuma Gallery.

If You Give Me Lemon, I’ll Make Lemonade: Tales fromTokyo and Tangkahan

Angki Purbandono
MARYBETH STOCKMIZUMA GALLERY
INDONESIASINGAPORE

Angki Purbandono is an optimist. In 2012,
when the Indonesian artist spent ten months ina Yogyakarta prison, he inaugurated aprisoners’ arts program, and departed with anentirely new, rather jaunty body of work. AtMizuma Gallery’s Singapore space, in his solo
exhibition, “If You Give Me Lemon, I’ll Make
Lemonade: Tales from Tokyo and Tangkahan,”Purbandono again elevates experiential
detritus, translating the temporal—restaurant
receipts, rocks, dead insects and more—intogorgeous recollection.
Purbandono is a co-founder of MES56, a loose
photographers’ collective in Yogyakarta,
formed in 2002 in reaction against
conventional notions of salon portraiture andstreet
photographyin“Indonesianphotography.” Purbandono goes further byrepudiating even the camera itself, by utilizing
scanners to generate his signature “scan-art.”

ANGKI PURBANDONO, Elephant inthe Room, 2016, lightbox installationof scanography, 100 × 55 × 10 cm.
Courtesy the artist and Mizuma
Gallery, Singapore.

ANGKI PURBANDONO, The Monument A,
2017, lightbox installation of scanography,
200 × 65 × 10 cm. Courtesy the artist andMizuma Gallery, Singapore.

Marybeth Stock, “If You Give Me Lemon, I’ll Make Lemonade: Tales from Tokyo and Tangkahan”, ArtAsiaPacific (Accessed date 17 June 2020)
http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/WebExclusives/IfYouGiveMeLemonIllMakeLemonadeTalesFromTokyoAndTangkahan

At Mizuma, the artist presented 30 new scanographs, with all but two dated 2017, some asneon-lightbox installations of C-prints, others as long ﬂuttering fabric banners imprinted withdroll imagery.
Purbandono’s “Lemonade” reﬂects the dichotomy of two utterly distinct personal
experiences: a month spent in the tiny Indonesian village of Tangkahan, in the Sumatranjungle; and a couple of weeks in metropolitan Tokyo, assailed by its frenetic environment ofconcrete and materialism. True to Purbandono’s idiosyncratic “documentarian” approach, theartist collected and scanned found objects during these visits. For the show at Mizuma, hethen incorporated this imagery into an exuberant, maze-like installation of towering red
scaﬀolding, studded with large lightboxes and hung with banners.
Unsurprisingly, this massive construction vacillated between the subdued hues of Sumatrannature and vibrant Tokyo ﬂash. Visitors were compelled to gingerly pick their way throughthis labyrinth (taking care to avoid injury against low-slung piping and heavy lightboxes),
which evoked the uncanny sensations of both breaking trail through dense jungle, andprowling a neon-lit cityscape.

ANGKI PURBANDONO, Souvenir from Tangkahan, 2017, lightbox installation of scanography, 100 × 200 × 10 cm. Courtesy the artist andMizuma Gallery, Singapore.

Purbandono’s “tales” from Tangkahan reﬂect the village’s changing identity, as it transforms
from illegal logging center to eco-tourism hub. Interacting with elephants in the name of“conservation” is a highly controversial part of that new commercial identity, reﬂected in theartist’s slyly articulated lightbox Elephant in the Room (2016), depicting a miniature woodelephant nestled within a radiant orange squash. Reﬂecting the local fancy for erecting cairnsof river rocks, Purbandono scanned stately aggregations of stones, including the ﬂuid andimposing The Monument A, and anthropomorphic Stone Puppet. Souvenir from Tangkahan is ascanned grouping of stones, seeds, empty snack bag, ﬂowers, insects (dead and alive)—plus
insecticide lid—which encapsulate Purbandono’s jungle encounters in microcosm.

ANGKI PURBANDONO, Yayoi Ticket, 2017, lightbox installation of scanography, 53 × 66 × 10 cm. Courtesy the artist and Mizuma Gallery,Singapore.

The artist’s Tokyo imagery ﬁxates on the graphic appeal of Japanese
signage and pattern. Non-Burnable Rubbish, a scan-print on fabric, andthe lightbox image Crime Surveillance Cameras, are both layered ingaudy motifs, including ﬂamboyant polka dots lifted from a Yayoi
Kusama exhibition. Purbandono attended this museum show, as
ANGKI PURBANDONO, Non-BurnableRubbish, 2017, scanography print onevidenced by Yayoi Ticket—which manifests to perfection thefabric, 300 × 75 cm. Courtesy the artist
and Mizuma Gallery, Singapore.
over-hyped “Yayoi Glare.” The salacious Erotic Bubble (bawdy vintagetchotchke) and earnest Birds Can Not Swim (toy bird plus ﬂoatie) arealso typical of the artist’s eye for the farcical. It is the impudent image of a ﬁsh sporting ayellow-fur hoodie, however, where Purbandono surpasses himself: Sweet Lolita in Harajuku
pays cheeky homage to Tokyo fashionistas—and to a previous work from his prison portfolio,
After Party (2012), which starred a lacerated goldﬁsh.
Purbandono riﬀs on these peripheral artefacts, improvising and iterating memory: deranged
as they may seem, these are cherished—and vital—recollections. In a 2017 group show inSingapore, the artist’s installation Cosmic Axis Memories (2016) was a kaleidoscopic memoir
comprising hundreds of transparencies of family and friends, encompassing a heart of light.
At Mizuma, Purbandono’s vivid lightbox images were mounted in simple sheet-metal
constructs, recalling shadow-box assemblages of Joseph Cornell—but the eclectic imagery in“Lemonade” veers towards the glib, rather than the evocative.
Early in his practice,
Purbandono’s images involved neo-pop tangles of oddments like plastic ﬁgurines and food,
prompting observations that his work was triggered more by “play and boredom” thanconceptual complexity. The artist himself has acknowledged that he pursues visual aesthetics
ﬁrst, allowing the concept to catch up. In recent years, however, Purbandono has anatomized
his quirky allusions, classifying random objects as metaphor for memory itself. In “Lemonade,”here is the irreverent taxonomy of the artist’s personal reality: a ticket, a seed, a ﬁsh . . .

ANGKI PURBANDONO, Birds Can Not Swim, 2017, lightbox
installation of scanography, 63 × 76 × 10 cm. Courtesy the artist
and Mizuma Gallery, Singapore.

ANGKI PURBANDONO, Erotic Bubble, 2017, lightbox installation of scanography,
55 (diameter) x 10 cm. Courtesy the artist and Mizuma Gallery, Singapore.

ANGKI PURBANDONO, Sweet Lolita in Harajuku, 2017, lightbox
installation of scanography, 53 × 85 × 10 cm. Courtesy the artist
and Mizuma Gallery, Singapore.

Angki Purbandono’s “If You Give Me Lemon, I’ll Make Lemonade: Tales from Tokyo andTangkahan” is on view at Mizuma Gallery, Singapore, until October 29, 2017.