Transitory Nature of Earthly Joy

Transitory Nature of Earthly Joy, (2017) is a five-channel video work by Albert Yonathan Setyawan that records the slow process of disintegration that occurs when five unfired vessels of clay, placed in glass vitrines, are filled with water. Recorded under similar settings, but at different times, the videos capture the individual process for each vessel, from the momentary equilibrium when the unfired clay seems to contain the poured liquid to the dramatic breakdown of the structure into pieces and the eventual return of the material to a state of formlessness.  Each recording is looped so that a new vessel rises from the material remains, with the varying duration of each video creating a dynamic play between dissolution/materialisation.

While the monochrome images recall the quiet stillness of two-dimensional, still-life photographs, the medium of video gives the work a sense of time and movement. And though the actual clay vessels are now lost, their brief existence and presence is retained in perpetuity, albeit in another form.  The work is intended as a metaphor for the corporeal human body and the Buddhist notion of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.