kelvin atmadibrata

Here we go round the mulberry bush
The mulberry bush
The mulberry bush
Here we go round the mulberry bush
So early in the morning

Developing the narrative of death, BEAST hypothesizes on the potential sublime landscape before one's last breath. Death is considerably unusual in Kelvin Atmadibrata's relatively cheerful subjects until quite recently when it was initially developed for a residency in Tokyo with Tokyo Wonder Site (now Tokyo Arts and Space). The chronicle lives on into its second chapter- or to be precise a detour of its first with an attempt to progress forward- successfully or otherwise by investigating an imagined rendezvous between life and death themselves.

The performance involves a masculine figure inspired by CLAMP's 1999 apocalyptic manga, X, in particular the human-loathing character Satsuki Yatoji. He is passive, moves only faintly and crouches like a frightened child. With a helmet covering his identity, audience might encounter a familiar photograph- a cityscape of a trading district in north Jakarta.

Near to him is a modular sculpture arranged from thirteen black paper-crafted monoliths and an equally familiar piece of paper collage, all reconstructed after the ones presented for the residency and subsequently an exhibition in Tokyo. As a site-responsive work, a gleam of orange-hued light escapes hauntingly from the gallery's back door, suggesting an adventure to come.

Audiences are directly welcomed by a diptych of Rothko-esque print installed in lightboxes titled This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a---, is an unfinished, halted and paused reading of TS Eliot's 1925 poem, The Hollow Men. The images themselves are extracted from a scene from Jeffrey Bell's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D episode which aptly titled World's End.

BEAST works towards transforming Sepersepuluh's gallery space into an RPG video game-inspired setting. Relatively colossal landscape, an NPC as well as background music are designed to construct an image of Styx. It celebrates life-changing (or ending) journeys through a romanticized, blatantly aggressive (or subtly diffident) installation.

BEAST also features a poem by Dwinanda Agung Kristianto and a drawing by Aziz Amri.