Lot 253: I NYOMAN MASRIADI

I NYOMAN MASRIADI B. 1973 INI BOSS! (HERE IT IS, BOSS!) SIGNED AND DATED 25 JUN 1999 LOWER MIDDLE; SIGNED, TITLED INI BOSS! AND DATED 1999 ON THE REVERSE MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 145 by 145 cm.; 57 by 57 in.

T.K. Sabapathy, Nyoman Masriadi: Reconfiguring the Body, Gajah Gallery, Singapore, 2010, p. 14; illustrated, p.14 & 209, colourplates

"The overall impression is that the violence at the center stage is madness and yet so ordinary that it makes no headline.

Still, it is the images of open physical violence that make the grotesque in Masriadi's canvasses stir. At times, it suggests circumstances so fiendish that the whole canvas allows no jocular interruption. Ini Boss! (Here it is, Boss!) is an exposure of a frightening savagery: a bleeding, beheaded cat, a vicious-looking dog, and shadows of a bully and a terrified body that merged into the child's. And the child grins. It is a diabolical smile."

GOENAWAN MOHAMAD CITED IN T. K. SABAPATHY, Nyoman Masriadi: Reconfiguring the Body, GAJAH GALLERY, SINGAPORE, 2010, P. 14.


There is no doubt that the looming shadows in the background give the present work its gravitas. Without them, it would be a scene of an ordinary delinquent carrying a decapitated cat. The shadows place the boy as a witness to a bullying scene, but he is clearly unaffected. Then again, he does not seem normal. Outwardly, he looks like a boy wearing a white t-shirt with Batman emblazoned on its front, but wearing an icon does not make him share his characteristics. In fact, his actions seem to be the complete opposite. Masriadi cleverly leaves further hints of this by depicting the boy's hair in the shape of an upside down bat.

Given the time frame of this painting's completion, it was executed between Dewa Perang (War God), Lot 238, and Untitled – Hospital Bed (illustrated in a reference image for Lot 238). Both works grapple with the subject of power abuse, hypocrisy, unethical behavior and perfidy. This was clearly Masriadi's foremost preoccupation during this period (the explanation for this is discussed in detail in the catalogue note for Lot 238), and if Dewa Perang (War God) and Untitled – Hospital Bed, depicted the people who caused the abuse, the present Lot illustrates their influence on the lives of those around them. Although relatively smaller, this important vignette completes the arc and becomes a part of the history that Masriadi documented.