Paintings by 2007 ISI (Bali Art Institute) Best Graduates,
Theo Ambiyana, Listya Wahyuni and Eka Partama,
at Ganesha Gallery, Four Seasons Resort,
Jimbaran Bay. Tel: 701010.
Since opening in 2003, the Balinese branch of the ISI (Indonesian Institute of Fine Arts) has had a great impact on the local Balinese art scene. One of the major benefits of the Institution has been to give young Balinese artists, wishing to study contemporary art, the opportunity to remain on the island of their birth. Earlier generations of artists were obliged to move to the central ISI campus in Jogjakarta, Java. Moving off the island is often well beyond the financial means of many Balinese art students, so, consequently, the opening of the Balinese branch of the Institution has also increased the number of Balinese students able to study art. In addition, the Institution has even been able to attract non-Balinese art students, from all over Indonesia, drawn to the island by Bali’s reputation as an important centre of the arts. Whether or not Bali actually requires any more artists is a mute point. The island is already over-swamped with many artists of very different disciplines and techniques. However, in any society it is through their arts that culture is defined, and it is in the young and emerging artists that we discover new trends, developing styles, and original concepts. In Ganesha Gallery’s current exhibition, ‘Bright Ideas’, three talented graduates of the ISI class of 2007, namely, Theo Ambiyana, Listya Wahyuni and Eka Partama, personify evolving streams in Balinese contemporary art.
Theo Ambiyana creates highly realistic images of flowers, suspended in a surrealistic landscape. His painting ‘Spreading Love’ takes its cue from a famous piece of surrealism art. Man Ray (1890-1976) was a surrealist artist who’s painting ‘Heure de L’Observatoire’ featured a pair of disconnected lips floating in the sky above an indistinct landscape. The image went on to enjoy some considerable success in popular culture, and it is probably best known as the logo for the movie musical ‘The Rocky Horror Show’. In the logo the lips retain their surrealistic mystery, but they are also imbued with a sexy undertone. Ambiyana’s painting utilizes the concept of ‘floating lips’, but, here, sweet and heady perfumed daisy-like flowers fall from the lips ‘spreading love’ throughout the world. Smiling lips and bright sparkling eyes, inserted into flowers, can often appear in all of Ambiyana’s canvases, where the soft, pink skin-like sensuality of the petals re-enforces a surreal human connection. In other works, such as ‘Harmony’, Ambiyana will take a delicate flower, like a water lily, and place it in an arid environment. The suggested interplay of ‘water’ and ‘desert’ continues to imply a surrealistic approach to his work. With his discreet artistic ‘appropriation’ techniques, Theo Ambiyana reminds us that surrealism is still well and alive, and continues to advance as a new generation of artists fall under its charm.
Listya Wahyuni is also concerned with contemporary issues of surrealism, and paints surrealistic terrain, distilling reality down to geometric, distorted biomorphic forms and symbolism. Her art is a mystical abstraction of reality. Perhaps inspired by comic-books or sci-fi movies, she creates extraordinary enigmatic works that can best be described as hallucinatory ‘dream-scapes’. In her painting ‘The Different Island’ anthromorpic and zoomorphic forms appear sculptural, as if they were chiseled out of stone rather than painted. Listya Wahyuni’s canvases give the impression of viewing some mysterious planets from outer space. Other works, such as ‘Siklus’ and ‘Grow in an Emptiness’, take recognizable botanical specimens and place them out-of-context. Bulbs and seeds take on an anatomical appearance, and appear to suggest ovaries and semen, and the delicate act of conception and creation.
Eka Partama paints portraits of people he knows. Real people in real situations. However, he chooses to ‘fracture’ these images in the Cubist tradition, or even as viewed through a kaleidoscopic lens. As can be seen in the painting ‘Balinese Face’ this interesting technique allows him to engage in prismatic explorations of color and form. The face of a Balinese boy emerges from an angular cubist decorative pattern, which can be interpreted as an expression of the boy’s personality and circumstances. In the work ‘Melody’ a piano keyboard is ‘fractured’ to suggest musical notes and rhythms, and this leads us on to suspect that another subject-matter of the painting, a smiling Balinese woman, might perhaps be a musician. The keyboard and face are blended in such a way as to express a unity between the two disparate images. In the painting ‘Selling Corn’ Partama creates a realistic image of a Balinese market vendor, where only the face is seen from a multiplicity of view points, to imply a sudden movement of the man, perhaps distracted by a customer. In all of his paintings Eka Partama’s subtle melding of forms reminds us that all created images ultimately consist of underlying patterns and structures, no matter whether they are created by paint on canvas, or electronically via a computer with pixels and rosters.
The success of this show, ‘Bright Ideas’, rests on the talents of these three emerging artists, who all display an outstanding degree of artistic skills, plus they are able to clearly covey their concepts, concerns and themes to a youthful and appreciative audience. The show also confirms the importance and necessity of the presence of the Indonesian Institute of Fine Arts in Bali.
