CHRISTINE AY TJOE (Indonesian, B. 1973)

Christine Ay Tjoe has won widespread recognition as a foremost female painter within Southeast Asian contemporary art. The Indonesian-born Ay Tjoe invests her deeply moving canvases with intimations of loss, longing, and psychological struggle. Tapping into issues of human excess, greed, and spiritual salvation, Ay Tjoe is fearless in depicting trauma and violence in order to discover artistic liberation. KThis One for You! (Lot 522) is from Christine Ay Tjoe's highly acclaimed Party series of works from 2007, a narrative on excessive consumption and its corruption of humanity. Within the 'Party' works, Ay Tjoe interrogated the conflict between existential greed and religious faith, where the semi-abstract figures depicted appeared to be indulging in debauched celebration with goblets of wine, cross-referencing the Catholic communion.
Within KThis One for You! the solo figure bears a communion goblet apparently filled with red berries, raising one high in salute like a gold coin. Here Ay Tjoe delves into the heart of material greed, highlighting the human desire for decadence and the luxury which money can buy.
Ay Tjoe's artistic style lends itself to weighty conundrums, using subtle white-based, earthy and pastel shades, which are then starkly interjected with a splash of crimson or gold with the impact of an exclamation mark, to draw attention to central motifs. Her bodily figures are amorphous shapes, reducing the humanity of the mortals therein to their basic grasping, greedy natures. Ay Tjoe's worldview is a constant struggle between bleakness of reality and the implicit, lingering promise of hope and salvation.