ANGKI PURBANDONO

Angki Purbandono is regarded as one of the most avant-garde visual artists working in the medium of photography in Indonesia today. A large body of his works employs scanography, a process where the camera is replaced with a scanner, capturing images where light seems to be even and flat across the entire composition but where there is actually a profusion of slightly overlapping images.

In Golden Dragon (Lot 2566) from his Noodle Theory series, Angki Purbandono refers to western and eastern mythologies about dragons: in eastern cultures, the dragon is viewed as a powerful creature associated with wealth, fertility, abundance and good fortune, while in the west, the dragon is oftentimes portrayed as a wild creature and a bearer of wrath. The dragon appears in a sequenced movement across three prints, picking up noodles. Noodles are a symbol of longevity in Chinese culture as well as being a staple food item, however Angki deliberately steers away from any definitive fixed meaning. Instead, Angki Purbandono invites us to enjoy the ambiguous relationship between form and symbol through a range of different perspectives and interpretations.