BIASA Artspace introduces itself at the Rome Contemporary Art Fair. The occasion arouses from the collaboration with Roman based gallery IL PONTE CONTEMPORANEA. From the 2nd to the 12th of April 2009, BIASA Artspace will present a solo show by UGO UNTORO at Via di Montoro n.3, Rome

Widely recognised both in Asia and South Eastern Asia, Ugo Untoro is among the contemporary artists that most contributed to open Indonesian art to an international plan. Painter, sculptor, video maker and performing artist, Untoro depicts a distressing humanity in a perpetual metamorphosis process, representing himself simultaneously as the executioner and the victim, as the artist and the spectator. Reinterpreting the artistic hybrid of the man-animal, the artist creates a novel version of the Minotaur, the horse substituting the mythological taurus, to account the most intimate sites of his (sub)consciusness, dissolving the distance that separates the artist from the work and the work from the viewer. His magnetic images are tridimensional poems that penetrate our soul, revealing, often unwittingly, the unfulfillments of a turbulent Indonesia reality, Untoro recently held a solo in Seoul and participated to exhibitions in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Jakarta. In 2008 he participated with BIASA Artspace to the Shanghai Biennial.

Ugo Untoro (Purbalingga, 1970) is one of the artists who has brought contemporary Indonesian art to a new level. He has already been recognized across the archipelago for his strong character and persistence in creating art works that reflect on the conditions of existence, both at the level of being an artists and being a human being, as well as in showcasing Indonesian contemporary culture for what it is – turbulent, but also pure and simple part of everyday reality.

Over the past decade or more, Ugo Untoro’s works have encompassed an elaborate collection of paintings, drawings, poems and writings, and in recent years he has also explored intricate installation projects, as can be seen in his work poem of blood.