ShanghART is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by Boedi Widjaja, featuring new works from his Stone telling (2011 – ) and Imaginary homeland (2015 – ) series.

The presentation highlights Widjaja’s use of drawing and mark-making as conceptual, corporeal processes; producing outcomes that span a broad range of media, including text and large-scale installations. Stone telling looks at geological material transposed as marks—the artist’s proto-writing of land, water and time. Stone marks first emerged in Widjaja’s practice when he encountered the red stones of Fort Canning Hill. He continued to incorporate geological material in his process – from the Yellow River; Sumatra; and medieval ruins near the prehistoric cave drawings of southern France.

The new works in Stone telling extend Widjaja’s process where “stone marks” are made using graphite transfer, and the frottage technique invariably records the artist’s fingerprints on paper. Graphite transfer is also a central material in Imaginary homeland: kang ouw (二), an installation comprising a 10m canvas marked and drawn on both sides. Through tracing, transferring and making negative images, Widjaja contemplates wuxia films, Chinese-diasporic cinema that accompanied him through the 1980s.

Stone Telling, Boedi Widjaja, 2018. Image courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Singapore