Paintings by I Made Arya Palguna and I Wayan Sudarna Putra.
At Komaneka Fine Art Gallery, Jl. Monkey Forest, Ubud.
Tel. 0361-976090.
A bitter-sweet longing for something far away or no longer
in existence, a remembered place, time or event, are characteristics
of the powerful emotion Nostalgia. In the world of Post-Modern
Art, however, Nostalgia places art from its previous social
references into a new contemporary setting. In this interpretation,
Nostalgia is dependent on the forms, idioms and styles of
a pre-existing cultural or artistic expression. In the very
stimulating exhibition ‘Nostalgia’, at the Komaneka
Fine Art Gallery, both interpretations of the meaning of the
term Nostalgia can be found in the paintings of two talented
Balinese artists, called I Made Arya Palguna and I Wayan Sudarna
Putra.
Arya Palguna was born in Ubud, Bali, in 1976. He studied at
the FSR ISI in Yogyakarta, and has made that city his home
and workplace. Palguna admits that his work for the ‘Nostalgia’
exhibition “emerged from stories that I had heard around
myself. Bali these days is physically distant from me, still,
it always gives rise to all kinds of feelings. Ideas that
often appear about my home in Bali, which is an hour away
by airplane from Yogyakarta, are flavored by memories about
my family, neighborhood and life there, which are very different
from what I am doing now”. Heavily borrowing from the
cultural treasury of Bali, its rich imagery and painting techniques,
and claiming the right and pleasure to make free use of these
quotations, Palguna investigates Balinese rituals, beliefs
and social behavior in a typical Ubud style. Albeit, with
a sense of irony, disillusionment and disenchantment.
The painting ‘Inside Our Heart’ opens Palguna’s
portion of the exhibition, and it depicts two typically stylized
Balinese women located in an idealized Balinese landscape.
However, the torsos of the women are replaced by an image
of ‘dream-like’ clouds, epitomizing a yearning
for a nostalgic romanticized vision of Bali. This romantic
image of Bali quickly sours, though, with Palguna’s
following paintings. ‘From Here I Can Take A Little
Deep Breath’ reveals a Balinese family enjoying a picnic
in a brutal landscape, full of power pylons and cables, factories
pouring out smoke and pollution, and a ravished environment
devoid of any vegetation, while the canvas ‘Why Do I
Have To Fly?’ shows some Balinese zonked-out on Arak
or Bintang, or perhaps an even more sinister drug. The inference
of these works being that a romanticized nostalgia, commonly
depicted in Balinese art, does not in fact match up with the
actual reality of contemporary Balinese life. Perhaps Palguna’s
most interesting works in the exhibition are a series of paintings
called ‘Icons 1–VIII’, of which ‘Icon
IV, Big’ is a typical example. In these canvases Palguna
creates impressions, or Iconic Myths, about Balinese women.
In his eyes Balinese women can be calm, energetic, strong,
or even vigilant, but, Palguna is quick to point out in his
painting ‘White Cage’ that in the Patriarchal
Balinese society the women’s role is restricted to sacred
temple duties, carried out from childhood to old age, and
that the maintained myth of women’s social independence
and equality is exactly that – a myth! Having removed
himself to the city of Yogyakarta, Palguna appears to view
contemporary Balinese life through ‘clearer’ eyes.
His remembered and nostalgic view of Bali does not exist.
Sudarna Putra was also born in Ubud, in 1976, and he also
studied at the FSR ISI in Yogyakarta, however, after the earthquake
in 2006, which nearly destroyed the city, he returned to live
and work in Ubud. “Whenever I went home to Bali it was
only for ceremonies and family events. Yogyakarta was my workplace.
Returning home reminds me of shapes and appearances that I
had not seen for a long time. The days when Balinese forms
filled up spaces returned. Memories of the time I was an artist
using a traditional painting technique became present in clearer
shapes. Thus when I played with ideas about longing and desire,
I channeled them into visualizations which I was not familiar
with for a long time”. Putra’s ‘nostalgia’
also takes the form of a retrograde art style, but he employs
a surreal ‘photographic’ realism, into which he
has planted some strong ‘horrific’ Balinese symbols.
The ‘Rangda’, or ‘The Widow’, is a
mask with devilish aspects that is used in Balinese dance
dramas. Putra’s painting ‘Dance of Durga’
depicts this mask in continual movement. The painting can
be interpreted as an image of passion, which is always twisting
and turning, yet the startling impression of the painting
is created from the long lascivious tongue that extrudes and
dangles from the mask’s mouth. This sexually wanton
tongue is to reappear in the canvas ‘Pig Flavor’,
where it takes the form of a ‘pig’ mask placed
on the face of a cuddly teddy bear, and in the painting ‘Say
It With Flowers 2’, in which a highly rendered ‘Pop
Art’ hibiscus flower has its stamen replaced by an inquisitive
tongue. The aim of these works is to disrupt the nostalgic
feeling of his imagery, with a familiar disturbing Balinese
symbol, which can lead to suggestions of horror, terror and
even insanity. In other works, such as ‘Refleksi’,
Putra plays with ‘photographic’ concepts of positive
and negative images, again investigating the nostalgic power
of a traditional Balinese mask, and in the painting ‘Self
Portrait’ we do not see the artist at all. He prefers
to present himself wearing a Balinese comedic mask, which
may trigger for him genial memories from his past. Throughout
his paintings Sudarna Putra displays an uncanny ability to
create a perverse sense of humor, and his ‘nostalgia’
might evoke a sense of vanished Balinese wit.
What is important, and impressive, about the exhibition ‘Nostalgia’,
from Made Arya Palguna and Wayan Sudarna Putra, is that both
artists are working on a new image of themselves and their
Balinese culture, by examining their past and their present.
They both strongly question their own lives and their heritage.
By distancing themselves for sometime from their Balinese
origins, they are able to take a long, cold, perhaps cynical,
look at their heritage. What they have put on display may
not find actual favor with their Balinese audiences, but their
art should be seen all the same.
