Daniel Komala’s Larasati was a pioneer in the field of Indonesian Contemporary art. With Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale this weekend brimming with Indonesian painters, Le-Min Lim talks to him about his role in establishing the category:

Europeans and Americans began buying Chinese contemporary art a few years back and are only just waking to Southeast Asian culture, says Sandra Walters, a collector who runs a namesake Hong Kong art consulting company. Masriadi’s works don’t receive as much exposure as those of Damien Hirst and therefore they fetch less money, she says.

Masriadi and Agus Suwage made their auction debut at Komala’s company a few years back and their works were going for a pittance before Larasati’s bigger rivals Sotheby’s and Christie’s International began selling them, says Komala, 47.Continue Reading

The Jakarta Globe takes great pride in the growing prominence of Indonesian contemporary art. Here’s their exploration of the upcoming Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong of Indonesian art:

On April 5, the Sotheby’s Hong Kong spring sale is set to feature a group of artists from Indonesia. According to Mok Kim Chuan, head of Sotheby’s Southeast Asian Paintings Department, 78 of the 145 artworks that are to be auctioned off are by Indonesian artists.

“We will continue to introduce to collectors a wide array of exceptional Indonesian art, including the very rare Lee Man Fong’s ‘Bali Life,’ which boasts excellent provenance as it was originally given by the artist to a friend in the early 1960s,” Mok said. “It is one of the outstanding examples in Lee’s acclaimed Balinese series.”  The chosen works of modern and contemporary pieces, previewed at Sotheby’s Jakarta office in early March, include Affandi’s “Cuenca,” I Nyoman Masriadi’s “I’m Still Lucky” and Agus Suwage’s studies of human psychology, “I See, I Hear, I Feel” and “Don’t Be Amazed, Don’t Be Entitled.”

The sale of these works offers a glimpse of how far Indonesian artists have come in making a name for themselves in the global market. For example, while modern works by the likes of Affandi, Lee Man Fong, S Sudjojono and Hendra Gunawan continue to appeal to collectors, it was I Nyoman Masriadi’s “The Man from Bantul” that set a world record for a contemporary Southeast Asian painting when it sold for $1 million in 2008. […] According to Mok, it was in 2006 that Southeast Asian contemporary art “began taking an upward swing in recognition and sales.” Continue Reading