Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

While the invention of the camera was once feared to cause the imminent demise of realism on canvas as photography would sufficiently portray objects in precise form,today's new technology in cameras and digital equipment has turned out to offer painters even more alternatives.

Livi, 31, gazed in wonder at Dikdik Sayahdikumullah's work Red ad Hoc, depicting cars stuck at the traffic lights in the rain. The lights from the headlights refract through the water droplets on the windscreen, creating a gorgeous scene, quite different perhaps from the reality of being stuck in a traffic jam caused by torrential rain.

Color Field Painting, which gained ascendancy in the 1960s, was another phase of Abstract Expressionism (AbEx). In the 50s, Jackson Pollock and the first AbEx painters of the New York School (The Herald, Artist’s Corner, 6/23/05) believed painting should be an intensely emotional and physical experience. In their “action” paintings, they poured, dripped and flung house paint from cans to canvas attached to the wall or floor using sticks, trowels and knives as they energetically emoted. AbEx was supposed to be a direct revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist and exalted individuality, improvisation and freedom of expression.

The question of whether the human figure can play a central role in contemporary sculpture continues to be debated. Even those critics seeming to advocate a meaningful role for the human figure, question its real relevance. Kathleen Whitney, in her 1997 article in Sculpture Magazine (now available in Sculpture Magazine Online), The Body is Exhausted, allows for the human body to play a role. However, this role is a supporting one. The body should not appear as subject: it can appear only to lend contextual significance to the work.