Eddi Prabandono creates surreal public installations and large-scale sculptures using unconventional objects, including repurposed bicycles, shovels, car parts, skateboards and traffic signs. Although Prabandono’s work tends to be whimsical in nature, it often raises questions about societal challenges and contradictions in Indonesia, his homeland. In addition to focusing on local concerns, Prabandono investigates universal themes such as global warming and the legacy we are leaving behind for future generations.

 

Prabandono came of age during the Suharto era, and he describes his early work as shadowed with terror and violence. In recent years, he has made it his mission to start afresh: “I want my art to be a spectacle for the viewer. It should be funny and entertaining…Those elements are much more effective in today’s day and age.” After Party/ Living the High Life is a twisted, towering Vespa scooter stretched to cartoonish proportions. The work touches on ideas of perception and movement as well as the uncontrollably rapid pace of life in the globalized era. 

 

Part of the early Indonesian contemporary art movement in the 1990s, Prabandono graduated from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta. Over the years he has developed a reputation for public installations, notably a four-meter high clay sculpture of his baby daughter’s head in a giant pit at the Jog Art fair in Yogyakarta in 2011.

 

Prabandono has exhibited extensively around the globe and in Indonesia at The National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta; and the Jogja National Museum and Biennale Jogja, Yogyakarta. His work is in notable collections, including the Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum and the Center for the Science of Human Endeavor, Tokyo; the Jogjakarta City Office, Indonesia; and Johnson State College and Johnson Municipal, Vermont.