White Space Art Asia is excited to announce that ‘Happiness Arrival’, an exclusive painting from Indonesian artist Ronald Apriyan, will be at Phillip’s Hong Kong 20th Century and Contemporary Art Sale on 31st March 2023. A portion of the proceeds from this sale will be donated to the Hong Kong Art School.
To participate, you can check out the bid here.
Ronald’s works are representative theses that marry his innovative belief to a strong artistic vision. He uses art as a medium to arrest and portray alternative narratives of quotidian lives and intermingling it with stories of the fantastical and the imaginary. His oeuvre deals with social issues and the intimate psyche of urban dwellers in a rapidly growing nation, wistful for the memories of the yesteryears while unable to cope with the changing landscapes of their youth.
In spite of its underlying messages, Ronald’s works are still often playful and injected with humour and pathos. It could be regarded as a reverse bildungsroman, where one chooses to deliberately return to a child-like state, innocent and unadulterated. Indeed, Ronald’s works transport its viewers and suspend them in a liminal space where personal history and cultural paradigms form the basis for a nascent, hybrid worldview.
In a vibrant homage to the iconic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Happiness Arrival is a dopamine rush of nostalgia for the console’s players, and a curiously familiar experience for newcomers. Against an intricate blueprint of the system’s inner workings, a NES styled as a U.F.O descends downwards, bathing the player in a joyous glow. In his signature verve and colourful style, Apriyan captures the shared experience of excitement one gets while playing video games, appealing to a universal feeling that transcends decades.
