Christine Ay Tjoe

Christine Ay Tjoe (born 27 September 1973) is an Abstract Expressionist painter from Bandung, Indonesia. Ay Tjoe's artwork style is mostly abstract imagery, with the expressions of human emotions and flawed figurative objects by using colors that has developed from primarily muted to bright hues color. As for the use of mediums, she excels in painting and printmaking; her art features strong lines, abstracted figurative elements, and a unique brushstroke technique. Given the style of her works, she has received several international awards to recognize her contributions. Her artworks received high appreciation and great market value overseas.

Christine Ay Tjoe was born on September 27, 1973, in Bandung, the capital of Indonesia’s West Java province.^[1][2] In 1997, she graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design of the Bandung Institute of Technology.^[3] She started her career as an assistant fashion designer before actively working as an artist. Her works include paintings, soft sculptures, and large-scale installations.^[4]

Ay Tjoe is one of the thriving female artists from the 90s generation who works in conventional mediums such as painting and printmaking.^[4] As a graduate of the Bandung Institute of Technology, she studied various art techniques, including intaglio printing and graphic arts.^[5][6] She began her career specialising in printmaking, later exploring intaglio drypoint prints, woodcuts, and textiles.^[7] The process of drawing is the essence of her works; she treats every medium as paper and pencil, as stated by Ay Tjoe in her interview with the Studio International.^[7] Having explored various art techniques to express herself on a larger scale, Ay Tjoe transitioned from drypoint on a paper to oil bar on canvas, which has now become her signature medium.^[8]

Derived from Southeast Asia's cultural diversity and ethnic background, the artist's works explore themes based on Christian narratives and spiritual concepts, emphasizing human imperfections and duality (Janus-faced nature).^[9][5][10] Her works are synonymous with the presence of strong lines, showing flawed figurative objects that are intensely abstracted.^[11][12] She uses the brushstroke technique in presenting rough to smooth transitions to breaking into harmony.^[12] Through layered abstract imagery, Ay Tjoe expresses human emotions such as melancholy, struggle, pain, and happiness, depicted from clusters of color throughout the images; She balances positive and negative space and color to illustrate the interconnectivity of humanity and nature.^[4][5][10]

From 2010 onwards, the color in her paintings gradually shifted from primarily muted and washed-out earth tones to bright hues of rose, pale pink, vermillion, ochre, and rich brown, giving her compositions a more intimate feel.^[8] A prime example is in the painting The Curious Hole which depicts a potent sense of a beginning – a delicate interpretation of the exhilaration of birth and the fragility of newborn life – created during a special period when her first child was born.^[8]

In the painting The Workers Ay Tjoe uses the intaglio drypoint technique and experiments with line architecture and form to enact each stroke with whimsy and improvisation. For direct engagement with the piece, she uses her hands and rubs the rough lines with her own palms to create a profound mix of color fields.^[13] The Workers conveys a sensation of polar opposites between loneliness and joy, most dramatically with black and white compositions. Through this painting, Ay Tjoe describes the significance of teamwork and partnership, the value of love, giving, and working together to create a world of kindness, faith, hope, and love.^[13]

While Ay Tjoe's works address many aspects of humanity, each of her solo exhibitions represents her view of the relationship between individuals and the general public at that time.

After her solo in Edwin's Gallery in 2003, Ay Tjoe returned to Jakarta, Indonesia again in 2016 for her fourth solo. Eksekusi Ego, "Ego Execution" in translation, expresses the artist's exploration of the existence of self and questioning the things people take for granted. The series of pencil works "blurs the ego by concealing the faces or identities in the collective of figures that now appear in layered meanings."(Carla Bianpoen)^[14] Compared to her previous exhibitions, which mainly focus on individuality, she seems "now desperately trying to comply with society"(Carla Bianpoen), killing one's ego to blend in general.

This artwork won her the first SCMP/Art Futures award in Hong Kong.^[15] She used typewriters connected to loudspeakers as interaction tools.^[16] Ay Tjoe also addresses the thought that humans can reach another reality only by going beyond or even tearing down the forms of chaotic daily activities. As art critic Hendro Wiyanto comments: ”Only by going beyond daily symptoms, perhaps also by destroying its phenomenal forms, can a screen to another reality be discovered. Only by going beyond the chaos, without denying it, can we encounter the cosmos, a cosmos that contains chaos or a chaosmos.” ^[17]

In Ay Tjoe's 2018 exhibition at White Cube, London, she used black as the main feature to represent "the dark potential which all people have."^[18] She was inspired by an essay written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about Faust; the story depicts humanity as a whole, encompassing both the positive and negative aspects of body and soul. Through the story, she discovered a particular delve into the darker aspects of human nature. ‘The reality is that darkness is part of human nature’^[19] Ay Tjoe reasserts the concept of imperfection, and hopes to call upon humans to be independent individuals with good deeds despite humans not being perfect by nature.

Important Joint Exhibitions

Christine Ay Tjoe's important joint exhibitions took place in several countries, including China, the USA, the UK, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Italy. China National Museum of Fine Art (2003), 1st Beijing International Art Biennale (2003), Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (2005) National Gallery, Jakarta (2009) Shanghai Contemporary (2010), Saatchi Gallery, London (2011) Fondazione Claudio Buziol, Venice (2011), Singapore Art Museum (2012), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2012), Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017), Asia Society Triennial, New York (2020), Mnuchin Gallery, NY, USA (2023) Joan Mitchell and Christine Ay Tjoe: Two trailblazers of 20th and 21st Century abstraction^[24]

• In 2007, she was awarded one of the top five winners of the Philips Morris Indonesia Art Award.^[25]
• In 2008, she received an award for her performance in the solo role of Interiority of Hope at the Emitant Gallery in Surabaya. In the same year she became an artist residency at STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery in Singapore.
• In 2009 she was awarded the SCMP Art Futures Prize Winner at the Hong Kong Art Fair.
• In 2015 she received the Prudential Eye Award.^[26]

Her contemporary paintings have received high appreciation abroad, especially in Asia. In 2017 her painting entitled Small Flies and Other Wings was sold for HK$11.7 Million by the Phillips auction house in Hong Kong, which placed her works among the most expensive living Indonesian artists. The painting depicts life and death, visualized by a swarm of flies.^[27] The prices for paintings of Christine remain high. In 2021, her painting Second Studio from 2013 was sold by Sotheby's for HK$7.4 Million in Hong Kong.^[28]