Frieze Seoul

ROH is pleased to share its participation at Frieze Seoul 2022, its inaugural edition, exhibiting a site-specific, research-based installation by Bagus Pandega and Kei Imazu, two of the gallery’s represented artists.

Bagus Pandega (b. 1985, Jakarta, Indonesia) and Kei Imazu (b.1980, Yamaguchi, Japan) focus on kinetic multimedia installations and painting respectively, and they reside in Bandung, Indonesia. Despite building further their own distinctive aesthetic languages, the two artists have been building a body of collaborative work as well that delves into the relationships between ecological and sociopolitical histories of their surrounding environments. In the case of their presentation at Frieze Seoul, they draw reference from the local colloquialism Tanah Air, literally translated as “land and water”, but metaphorically as the entire archipelago of Indonesia.

This new body of work is based on research upon the Lusi Isle on the coast of Sidoarjo, East Java. The name Lusi is portmanteau for Lumpur Sidoarjo (Sidoarjo Mud), a 94-hectare island that was formed due to the largest recorded mud volcano spillage in recorded history. In 2006, the first hot mud eruption occurred from a natural gas well at Sidoarjo Regency, East Java, which has not ceased until now and has been declared a national disaster. The mud has since then continued flowing into the Porong River, resulting in the shallowing of the riverbed and has gradually formed the Lusi isle. The eruption has displaced thousands of people in the surrounding villages and communities, as well as causing billions of dollars worth of damage to infrastructure, property, and ecology. The mineral content of both water currents and soil topographies surrounding the site have been altered in an intractable manner.

In a series of interviews with a local shrimp farmer, they discovered that local aquaculture farmers have found means to recover their livelihoods through innovations in ecological harvesting strategies by planting mangrove plantations in select locations to filter the water from the mineral impurities and sediment caused by the Lusi disaster. The mangrove plantations have also allowed for the possibilities of a new ecosystem involving mangrove crabs, fin fish, and clams. Whenever the water becomes overflown by the mud once again, the crabs and other lifeforms begin to die and float around the mangrove roots, signaling the farmers to fix the possibly broken embankment. The clams also act as biological water indicators and are also cultivated to filter and absorb hazardous materials from the water. The development of these strategies, alongside other indigenous responses, are made possible and have been kept intact by the local communities of aquaculture farmers, all working collaboratively to help each other adapt and survive.

Based on their observations, Imazu has developed a new body of work consisting of When Facing the Mud (Response of Shrimp Farmers in Sidoarjo) (2022), an expansive diptych depicting an aerial view of Lusi and its mudflow towards the ocean, as well as the geographical locations of mines and strata of soil that depict layers of time in its topography. Imazu’s painting places in juxtaposition with each other a map of the Porong Regency with scenes from the shrimp farmer’s personal narrative and biological cycles putting in picture the silvofishery system. To further illustrate life after the disaster, Imazu shows When Facing the Mud (Putra) (2022), a two-channel video projection on a pair of silkscreen that present their conversations with a local shrimp farmer. Imazu has also developed a number of intimately scaled paintings to further express more quotidian textures pertaining to the interviewed farmer and his daily cycle of life.

In conversation, Pandega has developed Cycle (2022), a complex DIY 3D-printing machine that utilizes mud samples taken directly from Lusi Isle as a medium and prints sculptures throughout the duration of the presentation in a constant cycle based on the mud. Cycle prints architectural structures constantly based on a decrepit house Pandega came across as he visited Lusi. Every day, Cycle will be constructing the mud house repeatedly, then destroyed repeatedly, in a continuous manner.

In addition to the constantly house-building 3D-printed machine, Pandega will also show Grey Pool (2022), a sculptural visualization of the mud spillage. An aerial mapping of the affected area made out of Plexiglass is attached to a mist machine representing the continuity of the mud spillage today.

In both the works of Imazu and Pandega, destruction and regeneration are not binary concepts that interject upon each other, but instead form necessary conditions by which the other exists. The emphasis on the project, therefore, is not so much as critique towards manmade disasters or the Anthropocene, but rather in relation to our capacity to be resilient and adaptive to the ever-changing.

Born 1980, Yamaguchi, Japan
Lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia

Kei Imazu’s painting practice takes root in the peculiar conditions of the contemporary Internet age, where the visual torrent of information becomes a repository to distort and reassemble. These resulting 3D-renderings and digital sketches, by-products of a saturated image world, serve as sketches for her oil paintings. This approach is shaped by the artist’s archaeological impulse and her interest in the recovery and reconstruction of human lifeworlds from material cultures; since moving to Indonesia in 2018, Imazu’s works have come to address the country’s colonial histories as well as the multiple stories and folklores shared across the archipelago, which often contain parallel themes to global mythological narratives. Recently, Imazu’s practice has expanded to include painted sculptures and installations as sites of recovery and reconstruction, where traces of historical and mythical narratives are bound into new layers of understanding and kinship.

Imazu has held several solo exhibitions including The Sea is Barely Wrinkled at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia (2025); Tanah Air at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2025); Art Basel Paris: Stratum Vein with ROH at Grand Palais, Paris, France (2024); unearth at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2023); Sowed Them to the Earth at Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, USA (2023); Mapping the Land/Body/Stories of its Past at ANOMALY, Tokyo, Japan (2021); Anda disini / You are here at Museum Haus Kasuya, Kanagawa, Japan (2019); Measuring Invisible Distance at Yamamoto Gendai, Tokyo, Japan (2018); and Overgrown at ROH Projects, Jakarta, Indonesia (2018). Her group exhibitions include Thresholds at White Cube Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2025); Singapore Biennale: pure intention at Former Raffles Girls’ School, Hall, Singapore (2025); Bukhara Biennial: Recipes for Broken Hearts at Bukhara, Uzbekistan (2025); Bangkok Art Biennale: Nurture Gaia at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok, Thailand (2024); Frieze Seoul, COEX Convention & Exhibition Center, Seoul, South Korea (2022); WAGIWAGI at documenta fifteen, Hübner areal, Kassel, Germany (2022); Declaring Distance: Bandung — Leiden at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2022); AAAAHHH!!! Paris Internationale in Paris, France (2018), all featuring her collaborative work with Bagus Pandega; The 7th Changwon Sculpture Biennale: silent apple in Changwon, South Korea (2024); Let’s See at ArtSpace @ HeluTrans, Singapore (2024); 1 at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2022); We Paint! at Palais de Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (2022), Last Words at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2021); We Are Here at Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, USA (2021); Tiger Orchid at Art Basel OVR: Miami Beach, ROH Projects (2020); Roppongi Crossing: Connexion at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2019); Meet the Collection - 30th Anniversary of the Yokohama Museum of Art at Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan (2019); and Taming Y/Our Passion at Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Japan (2019); Kei Imazu is the finalist of Prix Jean-François Prat in 2020. Imazu’s works are part of the public collections of various institutions in Japan, among them are MUSEUM HAUS KASUYA in Kanagawa as well as Takahashi Ryutaro Collection, Taguchi Art Collection, and OKETA COLLECTION in Tokyo. Her works are also part of the public collections of San San Jose Museum of Art, California, U.S.A. and X Museum, Beijing, China. Kei Imazu will present her first mid-career survey in the forthcoming solo exhibition Tanah Air at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2025).