“Landscaping my Brain” is an exhibition of artwork by Entang Wiharso that features important earlier paintings, prints and sculpture presented alongside new work created specifically for the exhibition at Can’s Gallery.  The exhibition focuses on Wiharso’s extensive exploration of self, place and belonging and how people manage and adapt to change.  

Reviewing Entang Wiharso’s practice over time, a tendency to confront morally ambiguous events and experiences from a humanist perspective emerges in his work.  Wiharso’s knack for paying attention to what people are saying and to what is happening around him - his ability to “keep his ear to the ground” -  has resulted in work that reimagines historic events by grounding them in private experience.  He resizes the dominant socio-political narratives in works that are emotional and confrontational.  He consistently acknowledge human frailty and failure in his work while still recognizing individual resilience and agency. 

The title of the exhibition is based on a monumental 10,5-meter painting of the same name originally exhibited in the US in 1999.  This pivotal work, now being exhibited for the second time in Indonesia, brings Wiharso’s interest in social and political structures that manifest ideology together with his exploration of how people conform to and resist such systems.  It also references the importance of the natural world in his work, in particular the role of landscape as a marker of human ambition. The body of work selected for Can’s Gallery is pulled from various points in his career, harkening back to periods of upheaval in Indonesia, to the artist’s arrival in the United States and his experiences as a foreigner, to events shaped by his marriage and children, and to his efforts to create an identity that reflects his sense of belonging and alienation. 

Entang Wiharso has a multi-disciplinary practice and is known for his dramatic visual language and unique images of contemporary life. His work is layered with social, political and sexual critique, revealing a complex picture of the human condition. Having exhibited in many prestigious international forums including the Venice, Prospect 3 and Prague biennales, Wiharso’s recent work focuses on the duality of cultures and experiences in his two homelands - Indonesia and America.  His work brings into sharp focus issues of national identity, migration, race, political states and power conflicts. Wiharso’s desire to question the circumstances of our lives without prescribed outcomes, and to report back on what is happening in our world, ties the show together and offers strategies for considering key themes, ideas and aesthetics in his oeuvre. The work selected for the exhibition spans more than 20 years over the course of 3 decades, highlighting the methodology and visual and conceptual development in Wiharso’s practice.

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