Artist :Budi Siswanto
Genre : Painting
Perio : March 7 till April 7
Everyday, 9.00AM till 9.00PM
Location : Sukma Tarot Café and Gallery
Sukma Street #1, Ubud
Tel: 975523
Budi Siswanto hails from Gunung Kidul in Yogyakarta, and from 1993 till 1998 he studied in the Department of Art at UNS, Solo, in Central Java. Since 1994 he has taken part in over eight art exhibitions, all mainly in Solo and Ubud. Budi’s current exhibition, at Sukma Tarot Café and Gallery, is entitled “Notes from the bedroom”. Speaking about bedrooms, Budi has this to say: “A bedroom is a very personal room, a place where we hide our secrets from other people, exposing them only to ourselves at the same time. There, all our feelings, thoughts, dreams and ideas are born. There, we build a dialogue with ourselves, contemplate and become our real selves. A bedroom is freedom. Bedrooms are ourselves”. This most intriguing exhibition contains a variety of artistic styles and influences that Budi employs to elaborate on his theme of the secret lives hidden in bedrooms.
Within Budi’s paintings can be found touches of Geometric Abstraction, German Expressionism, Surrealism, Pop Art and Semiotic Narratives. This sounds like an incompatible mix, but Budi is able to pull all these influences together coherently with a distinctive painting style of his own. This style incorporates large areas of flat monochromatic paint, into which are placed Budi’s subject matter painted with bold brushstrokes. Budi also restricts his palette to somber, or “dirty”, colors from the tonal ranges of ochre, green, blue and red. This restriction of color, plus a similarity of composition and brushwork technique, unifies what is a startling collection of paintings with various stylistic themes. Within these paintings each feeling, secret, dream, thought, or idea, inspired by the theme of “Bedroom”, is executed from a variety of artistic modes. This is quite a dazzling display of versatility, and shows that Budi has a solid understanding of 20th Century art movements.
The painting “Silent Mount” is a simple abstract composition of triangles and rectangles executed in white, blue and green. The sexual symbolism is very strong, and can be associated with this subject matter in a dream state.
The Expressionistic work “Dead Watchdog” features, in the foreground, a large red dead dog painted in violent brushstrokes. In the background looms a dark house, with an eerie red light emanating from the windows and doors. This painting is an image snatched from some horrific and angry nightmare.
A sinister woman painted in a deeply textured blue, toys with a human male puppet while eating an ice cream cone, in the painting “Playing Male Doll”. Again, the personal symbolism is consistent with surreal-like dream states.
Pop Art repetition is found in the works “Three Flowers”. This observation of a flower in a flower pot, sitting on a table in Budi’s bedroom, is repeated in three large panels of orange, blue and red. Maybe the passage of time is suggested in these stark, centrally composed, clean and elegant still lives?
Semiotic Icons are expertly employed in the painting “Story for Bunga”. This work is divided up into eighteen small panels of child-like symbols such as birds, faces, stars, kites, cats, trees, houses, windows, hearts, leaves, moons, flowers and boats. These are obviously symbols Budi has found, or considered, in his bedroom but they are placed together randomly to suggest a narrative, or story, with much the same clarity, or logic, found in a dream.
A bedroom is such a simple theme, but Budi Siswanto has found inspiration in this “banal” subject matter to transport us from everyday observations of his bedroom, into glimpses of his psyche. Many of his fears, obsessions and torments, depicted in these dream-like paintings, strike a universal chord. There is much in these works to which the viewer can relate, and Budi’s paintings skills are to be admired. This is a highly recommended exhibition.
