MAY 13TH, 2022
Each week artists are commissioned for a piece of art through the UNDRGRND Grant Program. 100 NFTs are minted and are randomly airdropped to UNDRGRND Membership Cardholders. To find out how you can be featured as an UNDRGRND Artist check out our Discord.
Collage comes from the French "coller," which means "to stick" or "to glue together." When we hear the term "collage art," manual or digital, what immediately comes to mind are fragments of different images combined to form a new piece. However, when we first see Gilang Nanda's work, we do not think of it as a digital collage. The artist selects, edits, and pastes pieces seamlessly, with suitable composition, so that the artwork feels whole.
Gilang Nanda, an Indonesian artist, specializes in digital collage art. His trademark is the use of collage media from vintage Western comics from the 1930s to the 1980s, resulting in retro-style illustrations. Gilang uses digital collage art to display various conditions around him from his perspective, often conveying social criticism through his works.
In this work, World War, the artist tries to inspire viewers about the chaotic effects of war. Destroyed buildings seem to dominate this collage as an inevitable effect of war. Illustrations of explosions and several war weapons such as armored tanks, missiles, and firearms add to the horrific impression of the battle. The characters' expressions align with the battle theme: fear, hysteria, panic.
Gilang combines two popular themes in the Golden Age of Comic Books in the United States: superheroes and war. Some of the comic sources of the images include Air Force and Battle Squadron. During the Golden Age of Comic Books, which lasted from 1938 to 1956, superhero themes were prevalent because of their inspiring patriotic stories where a protagonist succeeds in fighting the bad guys. Audiences thirst for stories of good triumphing over evil and as with any art with a narrative the reflect the events and values of the time.
Interestingly, the superheroes are not in the "winning" position in this work. Here, the artist chose images of superheroes who are in a state of helplessness. The three superheroes cannot move, tied to a missile ready to be launched. They seem to be screaming in fear and asking for help. It is as if the artist wants to say how devastated the war can be, to the point that even the superheroes cannot cope with it.
Gilang Nanda's interest in the art world began when he worked as a content creator for an Instagram account. While working there, he learned to edit images with some simple applications. Then he also thought about how to create artwork even though he was not good at drawing manual illustrations. Finally, he discovered digital collage art and started focusing on that field ever since.
Because the images Gilang choses can have new meanings and contexts, collage art can subvert old meanings and, at the same time, multiply meanings, creating works that don't always have a single and fixed analysis.
What do you see?
