The Antidote

23 January 2012

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Phillip’s art is an anti­dote to the con­tem­po­rary art.

Art crit­i­cism runs the same risk as a movie ver­sion of a novel - it hardly
ever lives up to the orig­inal.

Many of today’s art critics actu­ally struggle to under­stand and inter­pret
the ’Not’ so con­tem­po­rary looking art works. And yet in many cases, they
are the ones viewing and having to write about them.

The Western box in which artists and critics find them­selves in has made
them tend to focus mainly on works that rebel against polit­ical
total­i­tar­i­anism, even if the quality of the pieces is not par­tic­u­larly
much to talk about. As a result, a lot of artists have lost their ability
to express the spir­i­tual reality of the society they live in that was the
hall­mark of ear­lier tra­di­tional forms.

To me, Phillip’s art is an anti­dote to the hype that has sprung up around
con­tem­po­rary art and the focus on eye-watering prices paid for many of
those mediocre pieces.

All the paint­ings in this exhi­bi­tion are mounted on spe­cially designed
carved frames by Phillip him­self. In so doing, Phillip has in fact shown
the ability to find a good bal­ance between com­plexity and
sim­plicity, while showing a deep under­standing of human nature : love,
pas­sion and com­pas­sion.

An artist’s greatest chal­lenge is to find his own voice in an ocean of
mil­lions, if not bil­lions, other voices.

Everyone needs someone to look up to. One can be inspired and influ­enced
by others. But ulti­mately one has to sing one’s own song. On this note,
Phillip has found his.


Daniel Komala


Chairman
One East Asia

  J-Philippe, Bali Press review The Antidote

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