ROBY DWI ANTONO

In a departure from Roby’s signature imagery of children with giant eyes (a trio—Asa,Binar, and Elea—makes an appearance in the show), the artist’s new creatures haveno eyes at all. They present themselves with an aura of blind knowingness. Theyembody more than they perceive, vessels of arcane wisdom.

The kaiju paintings comprise both organic and mystical imagery, a coexistenceof idealism and materialism. Multiple paintings–Piteron, Chimetra, Luto,and Gargantuma–depict two floating orbs, one light and one dark, to symbolise thelight and dark sides of the moon, or the balance of yin and yang. Alternatively, Roby’skaiju also take forms from plant life. Rijoron takes after a jasmine flower,Orchibara is based on an orchid, and Nephentus is inspired by the KantongSemar, a tropical insect-eating plant.

Each creature is part plant, part kaiju, part human. Several of the figures might appearsliced, with their curiously human-like insides fully on display. Ortigan is slicedhorizontally, as if for an autopsy, with an orb-like egg rising from its groin,symbolising birth. For Roby, plant forms share visual puns and rhymes withhumanoid vulvas, which the artist uses as a symbol of birth. At the centre of thecreature in Kotekaro is a child’s nose and mouth–the only explicitly human figure inthe series–but whose eyes are covered by what can appear simultaneously as flowerpetals or a vulva.

Regarding these humanoids, the viewer may feel identification and alienation,familiarity and estrangement, holding two opposing sentiments at once butwithout conflict. Rather than recoiling, the viewer is invited to identify anddisidentify with the figures in a space of open curiosity, the way a child mightbe fascinated and charmed by dinosaurs. In We Are There Together, Roby arrangesseveral characters from other paintings in an ensemble that figures a model ofcollectivity in harmony.

The paintings are intended to have a healing, restorative effect: balance. This inducedact of empathy–an imaginary projection of a subjective state onto an object–iscentral to the engagement these paintings provoke, invoking a therapeuticprocess. Instead of repressing the strangeness within ourselves, the paintings ask theviewer to resist the instinct to shun the foreign and the alien, and confront theinherent incommensurability within the human subject by making peace with thestrangeness in an encounter with an other.

Press release courtesy Almine Rech. Text: Geoffrey Mak.