Edouard Malingue Gallery is pleased to present ‘Panoramix’, the first solo exhibition in Hong Kong of the Indonesian collective Tromarama. Established in 2006 in Bandung, Indonesia, Febie Babyrose, Ruddy Hatumena and Herbert Hans, have been developing inventive responses to contemporary urban culture spanning multiple media. Each work, rather than existing in viewership isolation, is woven into the larger cultural fabric of the city of Bandung and addresses, in interactive reflection, the cornerstones of Indonesia’s political and cultural environment.
“This exhibition highlights a new work by the Bandung-based collective Tromarama. They have been producing video animation works and installations since 2006. They shape and create their artworks based on their concern with examining today’s society. ‘Panoramix’ is simply defined as the mixture of surveying a subject, or sequence of events, in our contemporary landscape. The notion of an exhibition brings about an exploration of how the virtual world redefines our existential experience; how it structures our paradigm and experience vis a vis space, dimensions, pictures and text within the virtual realm. ‘Panoramix’ reveals the phenomenon of daily reality. It is about taking on specific situations in such a way that this phenomenon is dealt with.
Tromarama address as well as observe contemporary fluxes surrounding the relationship between reality outside of a screen and the virtual reality inside of it. The exhibition itself describes the space in between these various realities that now overlap. It is a quest focusing on one’s experience of reality, a step towards expressing the idea of a foundation of our existence, which always seeks to sort through the realities presented by modernity: being, ground, or substance. ‘Panoramix’ questions the mechanisms of our technological era in the context of the present. It is an exploration through artistic practices and reflections on reality by enhancing thought and action in practical terms.
From Tromarama’s point of view, the consequence of living in between the two realms – in relation to the virtual world that we live in nowadays – is more of a mental experience rather than a physical one. It bends the scenes from our daily lives in relation to how it creates artificial desires and pushes us to always be in a state of climax within ‘nowness’. Overall, Tromarama try to find the space where we stand between the reality behind the monitor and the reality out there, whilst substantially questioning the definition of reality itself.” – Riksa Afiaty
Tromarama is widely considered one of Indonesia’s most exciting rising talents and has been exhibited around the world. They have held solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne) and Mori Art Museum (Japan), amongst others. Group exhibitions include the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt), Samstag Museum of Art (Adelaide), APT 7 QAGOMA (Brisbane) and Singapore Art Museum (Singapore).