Gede Mahendra Yasa
About Mahendra Yasa’s Current Artwork
“But what is even more interesting and unique about Mehendra is that the illusions, he eventually reduplicates to the point of layering them, both at the conceptual level and at the level of their visual configuration. He does not stop at the game of simulacra, but rather reduplicates them to the point that they become hyper-simulacra: quotations of quotations of quotations; imitations of imitations of imitations; illusions of illusions of illusions, etc. So it should come as no surprise, at the conceptual level, if the title of a painting by Mahendra is “painting as mask as painting”, for example—as if to echo the words of Kosuth, “art as idea as idea”, which also appropriated Reinhardt’s idea of “art is art-as-art”—which in itself already constitutes a simulacrum on its own.”
—Prof. Bambang Sugiharto