IN CONVERSATION WITH PINTOR SIRAIT

by Jamie james

 

Pintor Sirait is an artist of three continents: an Indonesian, of course, born in Germany of a German mother, and educated in the United States. The work of every artist, out of necessity, eventually becomes a personal panorama of the culture or cultures that created him, however much refracted and tinted and flavored by the artist’s individual genius. In an era dominated by the ethos of globalization, few artists are better positioned to contemplate the heady confluence of world cultures in the twenty-first century than Pintor Sirait.

His signature works have been life-sized stainless steel sculptures of Formula 1 racecars, executed with a high, polished gloss. Sirait has transformed the cars’ surfaces with an iconographic overlay of Asian symbols and verbal expressions, notably Chinese characters and Arabic script, side by side with blunt English slogans. When he was studying liberal arts at the University of Nevada – Reno in the 1980’s, Sirait traveled widely throughout the western USA, which brought him into direct contact with the two great accoutrements of life in the American culture: automobiles and guns. These Western inventions have deeply permeated Asian life, producing a potent love-hate relationship. Formula 1 racecars, an opulent European technology arising from an American invention, have become something of an obsession in Asia, standing as an intense, telescoped symbol of globalization. Sirait portrays this unholy alliance in a recent work entitled Playboy, a mangled F1 racer shot up with live rounds of ammunition and covered with the smack of kisses. It’s a frank, direct expression befitting the brute force of the concepts it embodies.

I recent talked with Pintor Sirait at his studio in Sanur, Bali, about his upcoming exhibition in Beijing.

Pintor, what attracts you ro exhibit your work in China?

In the first place, I consider myself fortunate to have the opportunity to exhibit my work at Vanessa Art link in Beijing, and doubly fortunate to have Ye Yongquing as curator. I am addressing the question of what it is to be an Asian artist living in Bali, exhibiting internationally in an art world that is changing and shifting its point of gravity at a dizzying pace. The last decade has been marked by an international surge in Asian art, starting with Chinese and Indian art, and now Southeast Asian Art. Although I have lived and worked in America and Europe, exhibiting my work in China feels like coming home to my own turf.

What are some of the issues that arise in your work, as a result of being personally caught up in the vortex of world cultures?

I want to explore the unexpected similarities and tensions between tradition, consumerism, and the fixation on the Euro-American lifestyle in the hierarchical cultures of Asia. Countries like Indonesia are moving towards their own style of democracy, which is totally different from the Western model. These changes are also bringing about a new sense of esthetics, a strong sense of optimism as well as a sometimes fearful resistance to the new.

Many of your works combine images of death and destruction with symbols of love. How did that come about?

In this exhibition I will be showing works that were done from 2006 until 2008 – yesterday, actually! They started after 9/11 in the United States and the bomb attacks in Bali in 2002. Somehow I felt compelled to incorporate this new reality of violence in a visual way into a work that was anchored in aesthetics. It feels strange to have to mention this aspect of my work, arising from these horrible, violent events, but they changed me. Life in Bali became different. The pervasive, bizarre, almost unreal fear of the terrorist threat made it impossible for me to make art intended to be simply a pure expression of beauty. So I started a series which I called Terror – Beauty.