Artist : Nyoman Wirdana
Genre : Painting
Period : March 1 till April 15 Everyday, 11.00AM till Midnight
Location : Café Des Artistes Jl. Bisma 9X, Ubud Tel: 972706
Nyoman Wirdana was born in 1976 in Tejakula, Buleleng in North Bali. In 1996 he studied art in Bogor, West-Java, with Retno Trijoko, then on his return to Bali in 1998 he continued to study with Sugito in Ubud. Both of these teachers were students of the late artist Dullah, a famous Indonesian Realist painter who studied with one of Ubud’s most famous local painters, Pranoto. With mentors of this caliber it is no surprise that Nyoman Wirdana is an emerging Realist painter as well. Currently Nyoman is refining his own techniques painting still-lives, flowers and landscapes, and the results of this work are on display at the Café Des Artistes. In this small, but impressive, exhibition Nyoman displays a dozen or so meticulous, Realist, floral studies.
In the context of Nyoman’s work Realism designates a traditional movement in art which sees a close relationship between art and the real world. Realist painters attempt to create an image as near as possible to the original source. In Nyoman’s case, he adopts some of the painting methods of the Pointillists to achieve this goal. Pointillism draws on the phenomenon that small dots of different primary colors, when merged in the eye, form new areas of unified color. Applying the paint in tiny strokes, in various sizes, next to each other, allows the retina to form for itself the shades and nuances of the color field. Pointillism was a sub-genre of Impressionism, and Academic Realism was the very thing the Impressionists rebelled against, therefore, it is ironic that Nyoman uses an historical Anti-Realist style to create modern-day Realism.
Tiny strokes of various shades of color, in classic Pointillist style, are placed side by side in Nyoman’s paintings to build up his floral studies. Close-up these works look nothing like the intended image, merely a jumble of colors, but, as you step back from the paintings slowly they begin to take shape, then, suddenly, they “snap” into focus and there before you is a highly rendered study, almost a photograph, of an hibiscus, orchid or rose. This photographic quality of Nyoman’s paintings opens his work to consideration as Photo-Realism, which is a style of painting that emerged at the end of the 1960s as an out-growth of Pop and Conceptual Art. Photo-Realism is noted for its recording of seemingly unimportant details in a hyper-realist way, using a reproductive, photographic precision. However, before we can classify Nyoman as a Photo-Realist we must discover if there are indeed elements of Pop and Conceptual Art unmistakably evident in his work.
All of the paintings on display in Nyoman’s exhibition incorporate a unique “framing” devise. Each painting is bordered with a thick band of flat, grey paint, then a thin white line between this border and the flowers themselves. The devise is obviously Conceptual, and intended to unify the works, but the device also “objectifies” the subject matter. It reminds us that we are not looking at Reality but depictions of Reality. With the use of this border, Nyoman’s paintings take on a Pop Art aspect. The final images appear like painstaking reproductions of floral studies acquired from a botanical book. Or, they could be accurate reproductions of commercial postcards or posters. Whatever the source, these paintings display the impression of mechanical reproduction and analytical detachment that is much loved by Pop Artists.
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The Art of Nyoman Wirdana” is a hard exhibition to categorize, seeing as how Nyoman is content to slip from one style of Realism to another and defy categorization along the way. Apparently, Nyoman is one of those new breeds of painters that are happy to wander through the history of Western Art and appropriate whatever is necessary, or required, at the time. This technique, or art attitude, is becoming more apparent as we move further into the 21st Century, and find emerging artists ransacking and referring to the History of Art to forge a new style for the New Millennium. Why don’t you pay a visit to the Café Des Artistes, check-out the show, and decide for yourself where Nyoman Wirdana fits into the general scheme of things?
