Presented at Ace House – Langgeng Art Space, Yogyakarta, Sekutu Para Hantu (Allies of the Revenants) brings together five Indonesian artists, Kuncir Sathya Viku, Nalta, Nasirun, Noviadi Angkasapura, and Nyoman Darmawan, under Broken White Project #31. Written by Bagus Purwoadi, the exhibition responds to a claim that we are facing a painting crisis. The exhibition argues that painting remains alive and evolving within the Indonesian art arena, that it remains alive as both medium and idiom, shaped by each artist’s iman kepercayaan (faith conviction). From the beginning, the exhibition suggests that painting is not only about image, but about how artists hold and process reality.
The exhibition builds its argument through how each artist approaches painting from a distinct background, yet all treat it as a necessary act. Nasirun, for example, transforms wayang into fluid forms that move between figure and landscape. His surfaces, whether canvas or found objects, become stages where images unfold freely. In contrast, Nalta combines wayang with pop culture references, producing scenes populated by ordinary figures.
Kuncir Sathya Viku and Nyoman Darmawan both draw from Balinese contexts. Kuncir creates fragmented landscapes where Balinese and Japanese visual languages meet, reflecting a fragmented condition of information. Nyoman, on the other hand, continues the Pengosekan painting tradition using bamboo brushes, but redirects it toward a more personal and surreal terrain. His works feel quieter, yet intentional in extending inherited techniques. Noviadi Angkasapura creates figures that emerge from what he describes as ‘special guests’. His drawings carry a sense of unease, where lines resemble writing but resist clear meaning, forming sentences whose sound and meaning are deferred.
While the exhibition is framed through the idea of ‘Allies of the Revenants,’ the connection between the works rests more on the curatorial text than on a clear visual or thematic continuity. The artists are being united by a shared ‘iman kepercayaan’ yet their practices remain distinct in terms of reference, method, and form. The idea of the ‘revenant’ does not always appear consistently across the works themselves. Even so, The exhibition continues to position painting as a site of thinking , drawing on ‘ancestral stories’ and present experience to hold both visible and less tangible realities, that these works allow ‘sedimented experience’ to emerge as form.
In this sense, “Sekutu Para Hantu” brings together technically assured practices that draw from forms of ancestral knowledge and belief, where the visible and the unseen, the inherited and the immediate, remain closely entangled. Perhaps these tendencies are not meant to settle at a single, coherent reading, and the exhibition leaves certain relations open, allowing a degree of distance, uncertainty, and curiosity to persist. community, and what it means when protection begins to resemble confinement.
Ace House Collective | Equator Art Projects
Broken White Project #31: Sekutu Para Hantu
Kuncir Sathya Viku, Nalta, Nasirun, Noviadi Angkasapura, Nyoman Darmawan
6 March – 24 April 2026
Ace House – Langgeng Art Space,
Jl. Suryodiningratan No. 37,
Yogyakarta 55141, Indonesia.
