SCULPTURE + LOTUS VANITY / TRYPTIC IN ALUMINIUM

+ EMBODIED  by Asmudjo Jono Irianto, curator of the solo exhibition in Lawangwangi Creative Space

 

 

            « Carine's works in Embodied originated from a familiar theme of hers, Eros and Thanatos. Eros is often construed as sexual passion. In Freudian psychology however, Eros has gained a wider significance as life instincts, while Thanatos refers to death instincts. Both classes of instincts inform a person's views and attitudes toward life. A sexual desire, a search for pleasure, avoidance of suffering, and "fear" of death are aspects closely related to every person. The basis of human viewpoints and attitudes.

 

On the other hand, culture and civilizations are constructions that aim to repress the urges of Eros and Thanatos.They tend to cause collisions, between the values upheld by society and the individual persons themselves. In the same vein, the need to survive as well as the desire to avoid suffering and death tend to foster conflict, violence, or aggression between people. Carine sees the twisted face of this world, the hypocrisy of civilizations, and global dystopia as having been caused by the loss of harmony between the two poles - between Eros and Thanatos.

Carine's works speak about the balance between a zest of life and an instinct toward death. Between the physical and the spiritual. They speak of life forces that do not create aggressions against other people. Basically, a harmonious duality. Through her works, Carine tries to build a utopic world, but not as an escape. Instead, they are firmly based on belief, a conscience and the urge to share through art.

 

Thus, Carine's utopic imagination is not an image of a dream [idealized] world. Instead, at a glance, they seem bleak and horrifying. Skulls strewn everywhere across the exhibition space, on canvases, and on pedestals alongside phalluses. Carine's paintings always convey a mix between dark and light. In the same way, the skulls are presented with other objects: flower arrangement, crown, lotus flower, etc as though a deliberate intermingling of life and death. As though an invitation to fill life as best as we can, so we don't become too concerned with, or for, death.

 

Although Carine uses a phallus to represent Eros, it looks very gentle, as though trying to combine the masculine and the feminine. Doesn't the seed of life begin from a "union" between man and woman? In the same way, skulls - that are usually masculine - appear very feminine with subtle curves without their lower jaws.

Her works underline the importance of achieving a harmonious union between the spiritual and the physical, between the desire for life and for death, between the world and the afterlife. Of past, present, and future. »