ROH PRESENTS CUT THE MOUNTAIN AND LET IT FLY, EKO NUGROHO’S SOLO EXHIBITION

Images courtesy of ROH

ROH Gallery, Jakarta: 16 July to 13 August 2023

ROH is pleased to present Cut The Mountain And Let It Fly, celebrated artist Eko Nugroho’s (b. 1977, Yogyakarta, Indonesia) first solo exhibition with the gallery, which considers the visual language and sociopolitical commentary he has been building throughout his more than two decades long artistic practice in an ambitious presentation of multidisciplinary works.

Eko Nugroho

Watch the scene from the opening night here

Cut The Mountain And Let It Fly presents a new body of diverse sculptural works, including a monumental sculpture situated in conversation with works on paper, embroidery, painting, as well as an ephemeral site-specific mural enveloping a major section of the gallery space.

Made mostly in the last five years, these works speak about the complex situation of today’s Indonesian everyday culture and politics as a growing democracy, while touching upon the fundamental human nature at the core of our existence.

Presented by Interni Cipta Selaras

The title of the show, Cut The Mountain And Let It Fly, refers to Nugroho’s largest site-specific mural to date made in 2009 for the 10th Biennale de Lyon: The Spectacle of the Everyday. Held in Lyon, France, the work depicts a levitating mountain sliced in two which in the local context can be a humorous commentary towards Mooi Indie, a traditional Indonesian visual style dating back to colonial times.

In this exhibition, the text Cut The Mountain And Let It Fly presents itself in the form of a t-shirt worn by a male figure portrayed realistically through the sculpture Everyone Building Hope as if hinting at the tradition’s past existence.

Half Hero Half Stone is a series consisting of twelve striking monochromatic sculptures interspersed throughout the Gallery Apple, taking the shapes of various figures Nugroho has made since the early days of his practice. Underneath Gallery Orange’s skylight is We Are Human, a site-specific monumental sculpture depicting a five-legged robot upholding a spherical exoskeleton. The painterly patina suggests that the robot has weathered an arduous lifetime of its own, with pairs of eyes peeking out from the main body, alluding to today’s notion of looking in many directions simultaneously through various social media platforms.

Cut The Mountain And Let It Fly #2 acts as the backdrop of We Are Human, depicting mountainous figures in movement and conflict with each other, referring to the notion of “cut” as an act of assault. Aside from Everyone Building Hope, six life-sized figurative sculptures are interspersed throughout the gallery space, discussing topics such as labor and its potential device for enslavement. An embroidery that Nugroho has included for the exhibition, Tak Ada Mati (There is No Death), was commissioned by writer Eka Kurniawan, for a compilation of short stories published in 2018, which composes two figures of ambiguous nature interacting with each other. In this exhibition, it is left unclear who is the protagonist and the villain, what is right and wrong and instead the audience are invited to encounter, feel, and consider their relationship to their own external worlds.

Cut The Mountain And Let It Fly is open for public starting on 16 July to 13 August 2023. Reach out to info@rohprojects.net for inquiries, visit and follow the gallery’s official website www.rohprojects.net and Instagram account @ROHprojects for further updates on operational hours and announcements of public programs.