Black Humor

Indonesian painter I. Nyoman Masriadi’s canvas My Adventure Ended After I Met Your Mother, above, depicts a father and son standing on either side of a closed door. A mug dangles from the father’s hand while the son smokes. A tantalizing, possibly indecent joke is at once advanced and withheld by the painting.

“Masriadi refuses to let you see what his art is about,” explains his Singapore-based art dealer Jasdeep Sandhu. “He uses wit as a shroud.” But the market is rewarding his often garishly executed work. My Adventure fetched just over $370,000 at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong last month; The Man From Bantul (The Final Round) went for over $1 million to set a new record for contemporary Southeast Asian art.

Masriadi has come to prominence so quickly that there has been little critical analysis of his work. “The art critics haven’t caught up with the art market,” says Ahmad Mashadi of Singapore’s NUS Museum. And with about a week left to run on “Black Is My Last Weapon,” his solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum, www.singart.com, you have a chance to see what the collectors have been fussing about. Expect to be amused and provoked.