Artist :
Damar Permono Djati
Genre :
Paintings
Period :
April 15 till May 31
Everyday, 10.00AM till Midnight
Location : Café
des Artistes
Jalan Bisma 9X, Ubud
Tel: 972706
When attending Damar Permono Djati’s exhibition, ‘Bali
Modern’, at the Café des Artistes in Ubud, I
certainly wasn’t expecting to encounter a video environment,
or an interactive computer presentation, or a state of the
art hologram installation, but, as the name of the show implied
something ‘modern’, I was expecting to find paintings
with a contemporary, or perhaps even confrontational and cutting
edge, that addressed more pertinent issues within present
day Balinese society and culture than the typical landscapes,
temples and legong dancers that we have come to know so well.
However, I was surprised, and disappointed, to discover that
Djati’s work is more in keeping with the styles of ‘modernism’
that were to be found in the art movements formulated at the
beginning of the 20th century.
‘Modernism’ is a generic word that comes with
a lot of baggage. It refers to the styles of art that developed
from the break with academic traditions in the late 19th century,
to the advent of Abstract Expressionism in the early 1940’s.
It covers a lot of ground and a lot of art styles.
Damar Permono Djati is a Javanese artist who has exhibited
extensively throughout Indonesia from 1986. The brief catalogue
notes accompanying his exhibition contain this artist’s
statement: “I feel painting is like going on a tour.
Sometimes we experience our tour to make us happy, to make
us boring or to make us tired. I talk about my tour through
my paintings, and I can only hope that the story of it will
also give you some pleasure, and means something to you”.
This statement obviously has bearing on his life journey as
an artist, but, intentionally or unintentionally, his exhibited
work is also a journey through the entire history of modernist
painting. A kind of artist’s ‘shopper guide’
from which you can choose at will. The works on display are
randomly collected examples of his art, which are executed
in a highly personal geometric style that appears to be inspired
or influenced by Italian Futurism, French Cubism and Russian
Suprematism.
Djati’s canvas ‘Terbang’ (Flying) finds
its inspiration in Marcel Duchamp’s seminal Futurist
work ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’, which placed
much emphasis on the beauty of movement, and, within a geometric
structure, sought to depict a synthesis of time, place, shape
and color. Executed in triangles, rectangles and oblongs,
in hues of orange, purple, blue and yellow, Djati depicts
an Icarus-like figure at the moment of elevation. However,
the shapes are heavy and clumsy and there is no attempt to
depict a rhythmic movement that indicates the ecstasy and
exhilaration of flight.
The Cubists’ favorite subject matter was still lives,
landscapes and portraits. The aim of their art was to simultaneously
show things from several points of view. To achieve this effect
the Cubists broke up their motifs into many facets of geometric
form, created in light and dark hues. Djati’s painting,
‘Sawah Kotak’ (Block of Rice Fields), depicts
a rice field from planting to maturing to harvest. Created
in a pleasing geometric pattern, the changing color of the
paddies successfully conveys the passage of time and seasons.
Finally, the Suprematists were interested in an art purified
of representation and expressing itself through geometrical
shapes and forms. The aim was to achieve an expression of
a pure sensation of energy, combined with the absolute emotional
value of color. Djati’s work ‘Klik’ (Click)
is by far the most successful painting in the exhibition,
as it achieves these specific Suprematist ideals. Interpreted
as the actual ‘abstract’ moment when a camera
‘clicks’, this painting is a pleasing geometrical
composition that conveys the excitement of a camera flash,
and also conveys the mechanical procedures necessary to create
this moment of incandescent dazzling energy.
In his art Damar Permono Djati has been able to synthesis
some of the basic principles of“‘modernism’,
but, the exhibition is unsettling because he is willing to
sacrifice both the creative role long considered to be the
objective of art, and the quest for originality so relentlessly
pursued by modernists for over the past 100 years. Anyway,
as that tired old cliché goes: ‘Beauty is in
the eye of the beholder’. You can make of it what you
will.
