Leather Pencil Case
by Uji 'Hahan' Handoko Eko Saputro

Uji Hahan

Hahan's work is characterised by an ongoing tussle between "high art" and "low art". Blurring realism with decoration, each work illustrates a point of contact that exists between urbanization and agrarianism, the East and the West or between the local and the global. The relation of the art market with an artist, society, and even with art itself, become a huge attention in Hahan's art works. Hahan incorporates comic, film, music and street culture into a distinct visual language where the canvas explodes with bold colours that slip over strong outlines. The colour slippage adds to the sense of movement and spontaneity in what can be described as a topsy-turvy reality. Beside the canvas, explorations and experimentations on any other mediums are also a unique aspect of his art.

Music has also been a big part of Hahan's art practice. As a medium, he uses it also to talk about that theme in different ways through several projects like Punkasila which was formed in Yogyakarta in 2006, Anusapatis which combines electronic music and fast grindcore style, and N.E.W.S., which is a vocal group that responds to text based works in the arts scene. He also one of the founders of Ace House Collective, a young artists' collective and initiative space based in Yogyakarta which tries to capture the culture of contemporary Indonesian society through multidisciplinary work processes, collaborations and research. His art works have been collected by several art museums such as Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (GAGOMA) Brisbane and National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Melbourne.