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KELVIN ATMADIBRATA
Location
London
Website
Social Media
Medium
Mixed Media Installation
Titles
Smash (study of Kon), 2024
pencil and ink drawing cut-outs and photocopy collage on standing flip chart with paper cups
drawings on paper 60x90cm, sculpture 65x162.5cm
Bio
Kelvin Atmadibrata (b.1988, Jakarta, Indonesia) recruits superpowers awakened by puberty and adolescent fantasy. Equipped by shōnen characters, kōhai hierarchy and macho ero-kawaii, he often personifies power and strength into partially canon and fan fiction antiheroes to contest the masculine meta and erotica. He works primarily with performances, often accompanied by and translated into drawings, mixed media collages and objects compiled as installations. Approached as bricolages, Kelvin translates narratives and recreates personifications based on RPGs (Role-playing video games) theories and pop mythologies. His current works converse in the language of minimalist erotica, illustrating his survey of the mecha and transhumanist fantasy. Also motivated by the craft of contemporary tattoo, he experiments on the process of image markings on skin as a continuation of his attraction to living sculptures, breathing mannequins and bodies as pedestals.
A vertical familiar sculpture of a corporate flip chart stands in the room, subtly injecting an aura of bureaucracy into the space. A drawing of a hand gesture on the paper attached to it with a small cutout portion revealing what is underneath. An audience are invited to flip through the flipchart, revealing a collage of what could be absorbed as a scene of destruction, a post-apocalyptic landscape perhaps, a building destroyed. Amongst the rubbles are red eyes drawings. Flipped further, it alternates between the hand gesture against a plain white sheet and the chaotic collage, perhaps a reflection of one’s mental conflict. An evil eye gazing deeper into one’s mind. A gesture summoning destructive victory. The collages- or perhaps the entire work is constructed out of chapter 23’s page 15 of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man (2018-present) manga. The single page depicts the sudden summoning of the fox devil, with its monstrous head devouring blocks of building. Whilst I have not personally read the entire manga, that particular page strikes me with quite a punch. The sudden impact of the destruction caused by a force summoned by a human, only for the monster to disappear in mere seconds, leaving ruins but also victory for the group of protagonists. As a person living with chronic illness, encountering unexpected scenes on pictorial stories like the mentioned page is a revelation. There is an unspoken excitement of not knowing what is to come, when will it come and how it will survive.
Smash (study of Kon) reveals the alternate state of chaos and bliss. It is my expression of always in a state of knowing and not knowing, realizing and ignorance, expecting and shock. Potentially me imagining summoning a monstrous being, or perhaps I as the evil fox. The work is also a reflection of survival, of victory but above all, of power and strength, two very important subjects expressed in my works.