Thomas Ekkens Presents "Sentani Man"

Thomas Ekkens Shares Something Unusual : a Sentani Man , Inspired by De Young Museum Polynesian Exhibit


Thomas Ekkens "Sentani Man"

 
As in Vicky Lee's Johari Window, I've never heard of a Sentani Man before. Thank you Thomas for bringing something new to the exhibit. It's nice to see something from a different culture, different perspective from an ethnic world
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Not the 'cutey,cutey look'. It's taking primitive culture to the digital age.

Thomas Ekkens who has his own Tae Gallery website writes,"This piece was inspired by a New Guinea housepost sculpture in De Young Museum Polynesian Exhibit , On a monoprint field is a linoleum block print, an original poem in the Uncial hand with gold and silver gilt capitals." Thomas is also a photographer,painter and a poet.

From historical research, it was in 1858 that the Dutch Etna Expedition discovered the Lake Sentani island. Since then western explorers started collecting pieces from the Sentani culture. Quoted
"Collectors in the West greatly admired the highly stylized and abstracted forms of wooden sculptures and the decorative designs of barkcloths (maro), and Surrealist artists in Europe found inspiration in them.

The ordinary viewer would often lean toward what is pretty or 'cutesy" -the usual expectations. It takes a mind of a collector (Rockefeller Memorial Collection) usually of professional galleries and large museum(Metropolitan Museum)  to see art in abstracted forms in sculptures and designs in barkcloth. And Thomas' piece would be overlooked by an average viewer. But hey, De Young recognizes it as an art form.

In Kalligraphia 2006 , I presented "Baybayin" (The Lost Alphabet of the Philippines which was destroyed by colonizers) and I was asked to do a solo because the National Geographic had an article and a project on it.

I was telling  about the solo invitation to a person because I'd an  ethnic piece in Kalligraphia 2006  and the person was aghast in disbelief that only somebody who has already collection of scripts - European that is (Italic,Uncial, Roman,Bookhand, Carolingian, Blackletter) would be able to do a solo.(Not somebody like me!)  What a narrow view. Calligraphy is not only the Western or European alphabet , there is a  world of calligraphy, marks out there - Hebrew,Arabic,Japanese,Chinese, Aramaic,Cyrillic, Ethiopian, Javanese, and thousands of scripts  that make up the calligraphy world that you've never heard of. Like the Sentani man, the Sentani culture.

If you read the evolution of the Alphabet it came from primitive marks. Hurray Thomas Ekkens for exhibiting the Sentani Man.