Artist : Nino Mustica
Genre : Installation and Paintings
Period : August 15 till September 15, 2007
Everyday, 9.00AM till 10.00PM
Location : Gaya Art Space
Jl. Raya Sayan, Ubud
Tel: 979252
Nino Mustica is an Italian artist whose roots are solidly
within the tradition of Western avant-garde painting, and
he is particularly interested in the evolving power of transformation
and the emotive impact of color. However, his sensibility
is one of constant change, constant growth and constant evolution.
As an artist Nino Mustica displays an ability to adapt basic
visual principles, such as composition, to his newly observed
Balinese context. The Balinese lifestyle consists of ritual,
religion and tradition, and spirituality has never been separated
from art or any other aspects of Balinese life. True to his
ethos of ‘evolving’, Nino Mustica’s invigorating
exhibition, ‘11 Totems’, traverses and adapts
Balinese religion and rituals.
In the forecourt and gardens of the Gaya Art Space Mustica
has placed eleven totem-like structures. Like every aspect
of Balinese life the totems are filled with religious meaning.
Eleven six-meter totems for the nine aspects of God, with
two more for the Earth and Emptiness, each comprising thirty-three
layers for the thirty-three million Gods present in the Hindu
Vedas. The totems are made of glass (transparency), water
(life), bamboo (flexibility), wood (grounded-ness), flowers
(scent), textiles (color), iron (strength), white ceramics
(completeness), varicolored ceramics (diversity), coconut
leaf (nature) and stone (memory of the earth). The totems
transform and transcend found and natural objects into monumental
and mythical sculptures. These pieces address a subject-matter
that is linked with immortality, high virtue, and a form that
is sacred and manifest in myth, beyond its usual significance,
and may direct the viewer to a higher spiritual realm. The
totems also bring to mind the ‘Penjor’. The traditional
lofty, swaying, street decorations that festoon Balinese villages
throughout festival and significant ceremony times. In addition,
these totems pay tribute to the prodigious bounty of the Ubud
Art Market, and the skill of local Balinese craftsmen and
artisans, from whom their produce have made the sculptures.
Inside the gallery Nino Mustica exhibits a fantastic collection
of paintings.
We are all too familiar with the portrayal of scenes from
Balinese village life, which clutters most Ubud art galleries.
Unlike these naturalistic paintings, that evoke nostalgia
for the scene or event depicted, Nino Mustica’s paintings
are much more detached, analytical and dynamic. They are primarily
concerned with the translation of the ‘content’,
or ‘subject’, into an abstracted three dimensional
form in movement. In the works ‘Tari Rejang (Rejang
Dance)’ and ‘Penari Legong (Legong Dancer)’
Mustica creates two dazzling canvases that pay tribute to
the movements of Balinese dancers, and depict the rhythmic
and repetitious nature of the actions, and fluttery hand gestures,
of the dancers. The paintings can be considered as an extension
of the idea advanced by the Cubists and Futurists in examining
a subject from more than one fixed point, as in Duchamp’s
‘Nude Descending a Staircase’ and Balla’s
‘Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash’, where motion is
depicted by successive superimposed images. Unlike the former
painting, Nino Mustica’s volumetric human forms are
reduced to the representation of essential thick lines, which
strengthen the feeling of constant rhythm and movement. Further,
instead of overlapping his human forms, he separates each
form across the canvas, indicating a ‘spinning’
in the vertical axis and a movement from left to right in
the horizontal axis across the picture plane. The presence
of the flat picture plane is further enhanced by the use of
a neutral flat background, or even bare canvas. This makes
it possible to read his dynamic human forms in depth and movement.
Also, in these works, the large brushwork lends an added intensity,
and appears to encapsulate the austere, vibrant and sometimes
discordant sounds of the accompanying gamelan orchestra. Generally,
Mustica limits his palette to black and white, so when the
moments of yellow, red, green and blue colors occur, they
have full emotional impact. For Mustica, “color is emotion
and emotion is color”.
Utilizing what appears to be a thick rubber silkscreen ‘squeegee’
tool, Mustica creates canvases that are full of spontaneous
and expressive line. Within the painting ‘Banten (Offering)’
the broad evocative lines suggest the ethereal incense smoke,
of the offerings, drifting its way above for the enjoyment
of the Gods, while, in the work ‘Wayang (Puppet)’,
the black and white lines, together with the amusing play
of positive and negative shapes, combined with references
to light and shadow, create a vivacious impression of a shadow-puppet
performance. Balinese patterning can be found in the background
of the painting ‘Ngayah (Meeting in the Banjar)’
in-which the traditional religious checkerboard Balinese fabric,
presented here in black and white and red and blue, suggests
the peaceful composure, and then the sudden anger that can
sometimes erupt, in a typical Balinese community meeting.
An idealization of this patterned religious Balinese fabric
also appears in the painting ‘Sembahyang (Praying)’.
In this painting it forms the stabilizing background which
anchors the swirling black lines of five concentrated forms.
These intense lines and masses suggest spiritual energy, first
directed inwards by the worshippers, then outwards to the
heavens.
What is surprising, in this exhibition, is that Nino Mustica
can incorporate traditional Balinese scenes and themes into
his contemporary European vision extremely successfully. They
are a wonderful ‘fusion’ of both Balinese and
Western art streams, and show that Nino Mustica has given
immense thought to what he has created during his residency
at the Gaya Art Space. The paintings in his exhibition are
superb, and should not be missed.
