When the gates of Lawangwangi Science and Art Estate opened on 22 January 2010 in Bandung, a groundbreaking experiment in fusion between science and art officially kicked off.
The idea of linking science and art sprouts from two passions of Dr. Andonowati. A Doctor of Mathematical Physics from McGill University in Canada, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia, and lecturer at the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Twente, Holland, her first interest is that of a scientist fascinated with the movements of waves and environmental water of which she is passionately researching.

But as fascinated as she is in science and scientific research, she is equally captivated by the mysteries embedded in art works, which she started collecting after returning to Indonesia in 1999.

Wishing to help advance art and artists in Indonesia, she was inspired to mimic the model of the research park where she used to work as a consultant abroad. A research park is a community or industrial estate that facilitates the link between research and industries, she explains. The idea of a fusion between science and art began to take shape when she founded ArtSociates in 2007 to promote artists and help them reach an international platform. She had earlier founded LabMath Indonesia, together with her husband Brenny van Groesen, who is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Twente in The Netherlands. This is of course not surprising, given that Andonowati’s professional expertise lies in Applied Mathematical Physics and Modeling focusing on environmental problems, like water and coastal waves.

LabMath Indonesia is an independent research institute that scientifically examines environmental problems, such as coastal waves, coastal oceanography and environmental water, while advocating and stimulating the use of mathematical modeling and simulation. Facilities for research and production of research output like scientific papers and results will be followed by commercial projects developed through incubators and spin-offs.

Similarly, echoing this model, artist studios built in the vicinity of the building, will be like research labs where artists explore and experiment to create products that will eventually be sold through a special mechanism.

Located on a hill top overlooking the city of Bandung, the Lawangwangi building stands on 2000 square meters of land. The building offers a shared facility for art and science, housing an art space and an art bank, LabMath Indonesia and the representative office of the University of Twente.

The next tangible step toward the experiment in the fusion of art and science is the sending of artist Ay Tjoe Christine for a three month residency at the University of Twente to draw inspiration from the scientific world. This will be later translated onto canvas and exhibited after her residency in the Netherlands and in Indonesia. Another step is the creation of the Bandung Art Award, the first of which will be presented in January 2011. The winner will be selected by a jury led by the well-known curator and art critic Jim Supangkat.
Idealistic, comprehensive and unique, the Lawangwangi Science and Art Estate is expected to provide an impetus for the emergence of a new climate in the development of science and contemporary art in Indonesia and beyond.

Art in Lawangwangi has been marked by a white gate, which was designed by the winner of a national competition, the architect Sarah Ginting, Awe-inspiring, it gives a sense of the futuristic. The building, however, follows a rather conventional style, says Baskoro Tedja, the architect who designed the building. Andonowati wanted it to be timeless, he explained. Perhaps the conventional denotes the firm basis on which the imagined is being processed into reality.

Lawangwangi opened with an inaugural exhibition in its art space which runs through February 22, 2010. Focusing on new art developments, mostly in Bandung, but also in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Bali, it is titled Halimun (The Mist in Sundanese, the language of West Java). Curator Rifky Effendy had named it Halimun, analogous of gravitations in the social and capital realms of art in Indonesia during the past three years that have produced a kind of mist or miasma blocking clarity in judgment of quality art works.
For sure, unlike large canvases with pop-or large cartoonish images that have dominated the creations of Indonesian artists in the past few years, the sobering tone found in recent exhibitions in Jakarta, also marks the current exhibition at Lawangwangi.

The Lawangwangi exhibition of 50 works includes participating artists who have already achieved a level of recognition, such as senior artists Teguh Otenrik and Mella Jaarsma who sent commissioned works, as well as Tisna Sanjaya and the Tromarama Group of Video Art whose work was included in the Second Singapore Biennale, and is among the most popular groups in the world of contemporary art.

Almost all artists have participated in recent joint exhibitions in Jakarta, giving a good overview of current art practice in Indonesia. There is the restArt group of Bandung based artists, the slightly older Abstra X group comprising five artists, the Taxu group from Bali and individual artists of ceramics, photorealism, new photography, drawing and painting, objects, and video. But it is the new phenomena in art practice that gives a striking example of how contemporary art is not static. In this exhibition it becomes very clear that craft is being increasingly accepted as a contemporary art form.

A case in point is embroidery; once considered a woman’s domain, it is now being used by male artists. This is particularly evident in the works by John Martono (b. 1972) and Erik Pauhrizi (b.1981). The same can be said of the woven rug by Tinton Satrio (b. 1982).

John Martono is a fiber artist who is a lecturer at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), and also lectures at the Swedish School of Textiles at Boras University. His works in this exhibition shows a combination of painting and embroidery, but so fine are his threads, that from a distance the works appears like a painting; the borders between painting and embroidery invisible to the naked eye. But upon closer examination, his fine colored threads make an important accent to the semi abstract images on silk. Erik Pauhrizi who is currently pursuing his studies at the Hochschule fuer Bildende Kuenste in Braunschweig, Germany, had earlier used embroidery for his images on canvas, but now shows more refined works, while Tinton Satrio’s work of a synthetic rug featuring a black skull, is combined with polypropylene. There is also Nadya Savitri (b. 1981)’s work Last (part of a book series) Made of porcelain, Nadya’s the work intrigues with the imprint of guns over which a map of the Indonesian archipelago is drawn in blue cobalt.

While various exhibitions have shown that the art loving public has become more critical when purchasing contemporary art works, this exhibition is the largest of this kind. No doubt Lawangwangi is an asset in the Indonesian world of art, for Bandung in particular. Time will show whether it will also reach out beyond the national borders.