ROH is pleased to share the first solo exhibition at its new gallery space in Menteng, Jakarta, tumbuh, by Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi, with accompanying text by Goenawan Mohamad.

The work and practice of Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi (b. 1985, Jakarta, Indonesia) has fascinated the gallery since the artist’s first solo exhibition, Regnum Fungi (2012), which was shown in a small alternative space in Bandung, Padi Art Ground. In that exhibition, Garibaldi was able to present some of the initial aesthetic as well as conceptual interests that have been developed into what it is today. From that first show, it was quite evident that he had a great potential to express complex ideas in a multi-faceted manner, working in paper, living sculptural installations, as well as murals to express the embedded relationships between art and science, especially pertaining to the ways in which biology, even in its most microscopic of scales, has much to inform us of many things about our own selves and our relationship to intuition and imagination.

These initial interests, which were expounded upon further in a number of exhibitions in the years thereafter, Abiogenesis: Terhah Landscape at Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore in 2014, Quiescent at ROH Projects, Jakarta, Limaciform at Silverlens Galleries, Manila in 2017, as well as Lemniscate at Mind Set Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan, have consequently been carefully refined and developed slowly into the more mature practice he presents currently in tumbuh (grow).

In tumbuh, Garibaldi turns his gaze and concentration upon Eleusine indica, a specific type of grass. He investigates the specimens through magnification, multiplication, and transitions from representation to abstraction in expressing his findings. The works are communicated in a number of different languages he has been building upon throughout his practice, from actual specimens of the grass roots plated in gold to establish electrical conductivity when viewed under an electron microscope, a video installation that incorporates numerous depths of magnification pertaining to different types of specimens and variations of microscopes being utilized, a paper installation of approximately 4,000 unique monotypes on paper, as well as a number of new paintings that express this new branch of Garibaldi’s interests.

In order to understand Garibaldi’s works, this more descriptive basis of mediums and its respective relationships to more scientific functions, as well as artistic functions, acts as a necessary foundation for the work to then be deciphered in a manner that extends beyond the constraints of its constituent components and into the realm of the metaphysical or the imaginative.

The title of the exhibition tumbuh, or grow, hints at this provocation of sorts for the viewer to engage with the works and challenge their own assumptions and presuppositions regarding their own encounter with the individual works in the show, as well as then the exhibition in its entirety. That the diminutive grass roots become the subject matter for tumbuh, is one way in which Garibaldi draws our aesthetic intuitions into the direction or scale of an idea that is small, and perhaps also humble, in its insinuation.

ROH and Garibaldi are also very fortunate to have received the support of one of Indonesia’s leading thinkers and cultural figures, Goenawan Mohamad, to interview Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi pertaining to his interests and aesthetic explorations in the exhibition. Through a series of written correspondences, Mohamad sparked a series of conversations that discuss the confluences of science in Garibaldi’s art practice with Mohamad’s interpretations and correlative postulations connecting Garibaldi’s work with other artists as well as ideas.

In his response to Mohamad, Garibaldi expressed how his exploration and research had led him to the discovery of “allelopathy”, a natural phenomenon that occurs whenever an organism, in this case the Eleusine indica, is threatened by its environment. The said organism will then emit allelochemicals that invade the life and growth of its neighboring plants. Allelopathy, which in literal Greek means “mutual suffering”, is considered as a harmful biochemical infection towards the survival of other organisms.

According to Garibaldi, on the other hand, he sees that this phenomenon is a manner by which ecosystems and ecologies can be resilient through different environmental conditions — in the sharing of suffering between one organism with its surroundings. A mutual suffering is then seen as ways to survive together, rather than to harm or inflict pain. Through the microscopic lenses that allow for many degrees of magnification into what would otherwise be invisible worlds, Garibaldi invites the viewer to what appear to be complex, multilayered universes that are interestingly present around us everyday if we were to pay attention and look deeper.

Copyright belongs to The Artist

Photography by Andika Auditya R., courtesy of The Artist and ROH