RIAR RIZALDI

Following a residency at Gasworks at the beginning of the year, Riar has developed new work based on a dialogue between contemporary particle physics and ideas about the nature of God in tropical Sufi mysticism, a movement that thrived in the 15th-Century philosophical sphere of the Indo-Malay archipelago.

His Gasworks exhibition, Mirage, presents the first and second chapter of a ten-year project exploring how modern science and advanced technology effect the lives of humans and non-humans in Southeast Asia.

The newly commissioned film, Mirage – Eigenstate (2024), weaves together analogous investigations into the nature of reality, positioning Western science as just one methodology among many in a constellation of pluralistic worldviews. The film explores different interpretations of reality, from Sufi mysticism and Monorealism to theories of quantum mechanics.

Edited in the style of American astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan’s 1980s television show, Cosmos, which sought to explain the origin of life and the fourth spatial dimension, Mirage – Eigenstate references scientific mass communication, where complex concepts are described in straightforward ways, often through images.

The exhibition also includes the first film in the series, Mirage – Metanoia (Prelude) (2023), which uses 1970s Hanna-Barbera style animation to stage a conversation between two cosmologists about the presence of God in atoms.

Both films are presented as part of a wider installation including an aperiodic tiled floor, a hand-painted mural and a new comic book that provides further context for the Mirage series.

The Lead Supporter for Riar Rizaldi’s exhibition is Prue MacLeod. Gasworks’ commissions are supported by Catherine Petitgas and Gasworks Exhibitions Supporters.

Riar Rizaldi works as an artist and filmmaker. His artistic practice focuses mostly on worldviews and the possibility of theoretical fiction. His works have been shown at various international film festivals (including Locarno, IFFR, FID Marseille, Viennale, BFI London, Cinema du Reel, etc.) as well as Centre Pompidou Paris (2021), NTT InterCommunication Center Tokyo (2020), Taipei Biennial (2023), Istanbul Biennial (2022), Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), Biennale Jogja (2021), National Gallery of Indonesia (2019), and other venues and institutions. In addition, solo exhibitions and focus programme of his works had been held at Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto (2023) and Centre de la Photographie Genève (2023) amongst others.