= Teguh Ostenrik's Solo Exhibition - Linea Nigra

Teguh Ostenrik's Solo Exhibition - Linea Nigra

Start Time:	Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 5:00pm
End Time:	Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 10:00pm
Location:	CG artspace - Plaza Indonesia 3rd Fl #16

Teguh Ostenrik's Solo Exhibition - Linea Nigra

Curator : Chris Kerrigan
CGartspace, Plaza Indonesia Extension 3rd Floor #E16, Jakarta
June 12 – 22, 2010
Gallery Hours: 10am-10pm

Opening Reception:
Saturday, June12th, 2010, 5pm onwards
Officiated by Widya Surya

Teguh Ostenrik has spent the majority of his career exploring ideas of expression, communication and identity through imagery of faces and masks. Teguh’s latest series, Linea Nigra, focuses on his most personal relationship, that of with his pregnant wife. Yet in these new works he includes no face or element of identity. Instead he describes his subject with varying perspectives, from intense intimacy to a stark, direct observation, with references to his own constant interest in man’s primal nature.

Linea Nigra is made up of eleven large-scale paintings and five metal sculptures depicting the pregnant, nude female figure. The title, Linea Nigra, is the Latin term for the dark line that forms down the center of the belly in many pregnancies.

Through his paintings, Teguh is celebrating the beauty of the pregnant woman and pondering the delirium caused by waiting and preparing for the coming child. The physical and emotional characteristics of the subject change throughout the series. Teguh’s portrayal of a blissful embrace in one work is countered by the blunt, confrontational study of the pregnant body in another.

In creating the large, heavy sculptures Teguh pays homage to the woman, depicting her as a vessel of incredible strength. Simultaneously he satisfies his primal urge to control the process of nature by piecing each figure together from small scraps of steel. A shell is created, hollow on the inside. There is complexity with the use of such an abstract and contradictory material to describe the softness of the pregnant woman. However, a direct relationship exists between the steel dome that defines the belly and the protection a mother’s body provides for the unborn child. The voluminous sculptures are sturdy and grounded, but express movement and fluidity.

With so many variations depicted, this series brings up several questions regarding Teguh’s intent. Is Linea Nigra a grand gesture towards the relationship between husband and wife, or the realization that man’s own ego is the driving factor behind his participation in the pregnancy? Does man want to protect his wife, or the mother of his child? Does he see her pregnant body with love, or as a method of continuing his lineage? Is it the woman’s own sense of strength along with the man’s detachment from the process that triggers his ego and leads him to question his purpose? This is not merely a study of the pregnant body, but an examination of the father’s involvement and role. This is the artist’s attempt to understand the primal essence of the pregnant body, the mother, the child, and to balance the uncertainty of what’s to come.