Tabrak. The Crashing of Two Artistic Worlds

Tabrak. A Crash of Two Artistic Worlds

Exploring the contrasting yet surprisingly complementary worlds of two visionary artists, Made Kaek and Arwin Hidayat. This exhibition delves into the boundaries of intuitive visualisations, offering an immersive journey through alternate realities, hybrid creatures, and psychological landscapes. While their creative journeys are deeply personal and introspective, they intersect through a shared engagement with abstraction, transformation, and the collision of dimensions.

Kaek and Hidayat’s works invite viewers into their respective universes, where the organic and the surreal come to life through charged imagery. An introspective journey into the subconscious, offering an opportunity for reflection and exploration of hidden aspects of the mind.

A Crash in One Current

Tabrak, meaning crash, immediately pulls us into the depths of life’s consciousness. Whether viewed as the subconscious, higher consciousness, or displaced consciousness, this is the realm from which raw creative energy emerges. It is a gushing river, the arteries that run through the universe, connecting all living beings to this essential force. This river symbolises the unseen forces that fuel creation and understanding, yet it is only through a moment of awareness that one realises they are part of this vast current.

‘Crash’ may immediately evoke associations of destruction, contrasts, misfortune, or something unwanted and dangerous. Yet, it may also be understood as a transformative force. When we think of two bodies of water crashing into each other, they merge, becoming one. Similarly, the collision of the creative forces of Kaek and Hidayat does not result in destruction but rather a union of raw, intuitive creativity presented to us in the same space. Charged with the same untethered energy. Both artists drink from the same river, unapologetic, unrestrained and explicit in their ways. Their visions and essence undiluted consciousness in visual metaphors.

The Evolution of Kaek’s Creatures

Made Kaek’s enigmatic cryptic creatures are most often described as mystical and otherworldly. Birthed from a process that is both intuitive and highly disciplined, the handprint of Kaek’s creatures carries an undeniable beastly charm. His work evolves with subtle changes that disguise the significant psychological shifts within. 

In 2023, Kaek’s creatures stepped out of their canvases and into the three-dimensional realm in Manus a Conscious Journey, making their debut in the First Supper series. These creatures entered the world unapologetically, commenting on human behaviour with humour and boldness, in a social order with structured hierarchical positions. They are maturing, in the advent of their three-dimensional bodies, they burst into the world like rolling flames with sneering wit and a grotesque charm.

The Essence of Our Roots

A side note worth mentioning here relates to the environment in which these creatures are born. The imprint of one’s roots and the landscape that shapes one’s consciousness and identity can never be erased despite the external influences encountered in life. The scent of sandalwood, the Cempaka flower, where spirits and demons are both father and mother to all the island’s children, remains imprinted.

It is no surprise, then, that they are perceived through the lens of mysticism and spirituality. Such is the birthplace of Kaek’s creatures. Infusing his work with a spiritual imprint that is inevitable. His creatures, much like their creator, give voice to the errant wildness that revels in crashing the walls of propriety and responds to the ironies of the world with defiance.

Arwin Hidayat and the Borderless World

When examining the works of Arwin Hidayat, an instinctive recognition emerges between his world and Kaek’s. There is a shared raw energy between the two. Both drink from the same creative waters. However, while the similarities are apparent, differences soon become clear, revealing their unique psychological codings.

Hidayat’s works share the raw, intuitive shapes seen in Kaek’s, but where Kaek’s creatures stand as individuals, Hidayat’s figures morph and blend into one another. A combination of primitive and contemporary elements, Arwin Hidayat’s visual vocabulary spans broader, drawing from a wider pool of social and cultural references. Illustrative patterns consistently run through his visual aesthetic, as is often seen in folk art genres. 

Clean and illustrative, thick black strokes outline eyes, teeth, and patterned markings. Wheels, recurring phallic and feminine symbols, scatter repetitively throughout his compositions. This simplified treatment of form resonating in Hidayat’s work gives the same reading of ‘outsider art’ that is present in Kaek as well, even though neither artist would fit into this category implicitly.

The Energy of Non-Identity

Hidayat’s world, however, is a borderless one. Unlike Kaek’s creatures, Hidayat’s forms are based on no central identity. They are erratic hybridisations of any elements. Blending and merging, creating a blurred world where nothing is separate. Even the inversion of colours, where figures flip inside out, and limbs fuse, suggests that nothing stands apart. In Hidayat’s compositions, everything is morphed in a juxtaposed world.

Undertones of the human as an animal can be found in Hidayat’s work, echoing the beastliness of Kaek’s creatures. Hidayat’s wide-ranging portfolio, from paintings and ceramics to batik textiles and murals, translates this raw visual language across various mediums. While Kaek nurtures his creatures into fully realised beings with evolving personalities, Hidayat captures the energy of non-identity itself, suggesting absolute ambiguity in a world of fragments that are pieced back together through a formula of anti-natural laws.

Identity, Consciousness and the Human Psyche

Tabrak, meaning crash, embodies the beauty of the collision between Kaek and Hidayat’s intuitive, psychological landscapes. In their creative crash, the duality of meaning is revealed. By diving into their respective universes, we witness how these worlds emit the same energy of raw, unfiltered creativity whilst sharing with us two opposite realities. One forms clear identities, characters reflecting to us our human constructs, whilst the other destroys it all.

The crash, in this sense, is not a violent event but a merging of two elemental creative states – one that opens a window into our human psychological states. Ultimately, the fusion of these distinct creative forces invites a deeper reflection on the nature of identity, consciousness, and the uncharted territories of the human psyche.

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