Wiyu Wahono was born in Jakarta, Indonesia and began collecting art in 1999. Parts of his collection have been exhibited in National Gallery Singapore, Hong Kong Arts Centre, SongEun Art Space, Seoul, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, National Museum Liechtenstein, Asia Society Museum New York, and in Indonesia. He has been invited to be a speaker at dozens of art talks both locally and internationally, and has served on the juries of the Bandung Contemporary Art Award, Art Jakarta Video Art Competition, Gudang Garam Indonesia Art Award and UOB Indonesia Painting of the Year Competition. He is a member of the Board of Young Collectors in Art Stage Jakarta, Honorary Board of Patrons Singapore Art Fair, and was a Nominee for the Best Collector 2017 at Art Stage Jakarta.

Wiyu Wahono spent 20 years in Germany, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in plastics technology from the Technical University of Berlin, and was an industrial consultant in Germany.

11.20 Collecting Contemporary Art – An intellectual or a sensory experience?

One of the major questions I ask myself before deciding to add an artwork to my collection is whether the artist's work reflects the Zeitgeist (the spirit of our time). For it is my opinion that a good work of art should be a reflection of an era. I postulate that the future will consider the beginning of the 21st century as a time when digitalisation, globalisation, urbanisation and environment changed our lives in its entirety. Therefore, I don't procure artworks that please the eyes. Instead, I focus on collecting artworks that deal with the aforementioned contexts.

Over the years, I came to the understanding that contemporary art knows of no boundaries in its use of medium nor of any separation between art and non art. Thus, I started to look beyond paintings and sculptures, and began to procure Video Art, Video Mapping, Contemporary Photography, Performance Art, Scanography, Sound Art, Light Art, Installation, Computer generated images, Bio Art and Intermedia Art.