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Artificiality, envy and unfulfilled desires: These are the underlying themes of “PRIVE,” an exhibition by the Liaison art collective currently running at Vivi Yip gallery in South Jakarta.

“PRIVE,” which means private in French, runs until March 30. The show shies away from Liaison’s normally collaborative methods and instead challenges members of the collective to go it alone.

The Liaison collective is the brainchild of a handful of students from the Bandung Institute of Technology’s class of 2005, who came together in an attempt to defy the prosaic attitude they saw taking over the local art scene.

“We were all just bored with going to the same art exhibitions, which were becoming homogeneous in their themes and presentations,” Liaison member and spokesman Wastuwidyawan Paramaputra said. “We wanted to create something through a different discipline.”

Another Liaison member, Karisma Prawira Sudarma, said the art students, specializing in everything from painting and sculpture to product design and interior design, came together out of a shared passion for art.

“We met through our love of contemporary art and its diverse nature,” Wastuwidyawan said.

The collective looked toward the contemporary art scene in other parts of the world, in particular Milan and New York.

“In those places, the exhibits showed such diversity in terms of the types of art they were presenting,” Wastuwidyawan said. “Designer or household products could sit comfortably next to a fine-art piece — a sofa next to a sculpture. Those kinds of things really inspired us.”

Before long, Liaison began to hold exhibitions on and off campus. The collective’s first major event, “Cloak and Dagger,” was held at the esteemed Salihara Gallery. Liaison also did a major piece at the Bazaar Art Festival in Pacific Place mall, South Jakarta.

“All the members of the collective worked together on a single piece called ‘Cleopatra,’ which was xeroxed art on wood,” Karisma said.

He said Cleopatra was chosen because the collaborating artists thought she was a fitting symbol for the extravagant lifestyle represented by the sumptuous mall.

But for “PRIVE,” each member of Liaison has presented his or her individual interpretation of artificiality, envy and unfulfilled desires, which results in the kind of diversity for which the collective is known.

“Those themes aren’t really important, though,” Wastuwidyawan said. “It’s just a very basic idea to give the exhibit some sort of vague motif.”

Renassya Intania’s acrylic painting “Goldielocks (sic) and the Bear Hunter” shows a silhouette of the well-known fairy-tale character along with one of the three bears. The hunter is wearing what can only be described as a tutu.

“Vanity, Insanity,” by Saraswati Hamid, consists of two pyramid-shaped wood sculptures decorated with xeroxed engravings of what appear to be diamond rings.

Karisma’s “Sang Froid” is an edgy piece of artwork, literally. Sets of pins are stuck onto the canvas to create one of the exhibit’s most visually forceful pieces.

The pieces in the exhibition offer their own, sometimes tenuous, take on artificiality, envy and unfulfilled desires.

Although the “vague motif” doesn’t clearly translate throughout all of the pieces on display — which is Liaison’s strength — it gives “PRIVE” its individuality.