Formally trained as an architect at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Andy Dewantoro began his career as an artist with an interest and exploration of non figurative abstract painting. However, his interest in architecture was reignited when, during his travels to Europe, Dewantoro became conscious of how the new urban landscape had become to over-ride the presence of the people whom live within; to the extent that it was the urban landscape that defined the meaning of the cities more so than those who occupied her.

Since that realisation, Dewantoro began painting a series of urban landscapes, consisting of buildings and constructions devoid of human presence, echoing a haunting impression of emptiness. This emptiness is further emphasised through his characteristic use of monochromatic, flat and washed out colours, resonating a sense of gloom amongst his viewers. Through this deliberate deletion of the human presence, Dewantoro’s works seek to remind us of the distance between people and the artificial world which, has now become the natural environment of urbanites.

Airports, bridges, factories and old iconic buildings populate the landscapes of Dewantoro; subjects chosen by the artist for their defining roles within urban industrial society. Whilst these places and buildings could seem to be located anywhere, there is an over-riding sense that they feel like and are located within Europe, rather than within the cities of Indonesia where Dewantoro lives and chooses his subjects from. This disconnect between perception and reality forms part of Dewantoro’s investigations within this series, as he seeks to express his theory that the Western concept of landscape has influenced how Asian people perceive space and time.

It is within this in-between area of our forgotten spaces that separates the dark from the light, emptiness from fullness, the past from the future, that Dewantoro conducts and constructs his works from.