Paintings and drawings by ten prominent artists,
at Kendra Gallery of Contemporary Art,
Jl. Drupadi No. 88B, Basangkasa. Tel: 736628.
The Kendra Gallery of Contemporary Art is the latest addition to the ever growing Bali art scene. This stylish new gallery hopes to have a positive and dynamic effect on the contemporary arts in Indonesia. The gallery will foster international dialogue by showing the art of many cultures side by side: Balinese, Indonesian, European, Asian and American. The artistic dialogue will also be further supplemented by lectures, films, workshops, performances and in-house publications. The gallery also plans to establish an artist-in-residence program. These are very noble and ambitious goals. The Kendra Gallery opens with an impressive group show, ‘Paintings & Drawings, Works by Ten Contemporary Masters’.
The Indonesian art critic, Hardiman, suggests that “contemporary art should not be equated with present day art practices, so that it can be understood as art with a Postmodern tendency”. Although many of the artists in the show are not old enough to be called ‘masters’, they all display a ‘Postmodern’ sensibility, a different way of looking and responding to what they see in the world. It must be noted that Postmodernism in art was primarily a reaction against the formalist understanding of art promoted by critics such as Clement Greenberg, and their belief in art’s autonomy from life. For Greenberg, painting was about the process and technique of the work rather than its subject matter or narrative. Figurative art, was not, as he put it, ‘art of quality’. Thus, a Postmodernism sensibility in art encourages a greater awareness of the world, of wide social and sexual diversity, environmental issues, mass media and consumerism, as well as issues of gender and politics. All the artists in this exhibition highlight the re-emergence of the ‘figure’ in Indonesian painting, restoring to painting the great potentiality of the narrative image. All the images are imbedded with a sense of much irony.
Agus Suwage
Purworejo, Central Java, 1959.
His painting, ‘The Art of Punishment’, shows how the body can become an instrument for law enforcement. It is not pain that becomes the goal; rather it is all about shame, and how power is executed in our society.
Budi Kustarto
Karang, West Java, 1972.
‘My Colours’ proposes that the owner of a body is motivated to form desires, and that these desires may spring directly from the subconscious, resulting in obsessions or passions which have no rational explanation.
Chusin Setiadikara
Bandung, 1949.
The painting, ‘Menatap Langit (looking at the Sky)’, depicts a beautiful young woman, sitting naked and exposed. Apart from a suggestion of a chair, covered with a blanket, and an orange wall, there is no background or external elements. Consequently, the viewer’s eye is forced to confront the unprotected female body. Her defiant pose, with head positioned to the sky, and with her eyes closed, negate her vulnerability. She is not merely a sensual symbol for male arousal. She is in control.
Filippo Sciascia
Palma, Di Montechiaro, Italy.
Sciascia’s beautiful painting, ‘Scilla Bianca’, features a ‘weightless’ female nude in a swimming pool. Photographed from the bottom of the pool, the image recalls the cover of the CD ‘Nevermind’, by the rock group Nirvana. Sciascia turns the technology assisted photograph into brushwork on canvas, using the historical painting technique of ‘fresco’. The crumbling impasto image collapses the past into the present. Is the painting a medieval fresco, or an homage to a modern day record cover? A key question here concerns authenticity, and ‘artistic’ appropriation.
Kokok P. Sancoko
Nganjuk, East Java, 1974.
In the canvas ‘Sayur 4’ Sancoko questions the issue of completeness and incompleteness. It is like a game, where the viewers provide the missing portions of the painting from their own culturally determined memory.
Putu Sutawijaya
Angseri, Tabanan, Bali, 1971.
Sutawijaya is another artist who investigates desire. In his painting, ‘Menyambut Milenium Baru’, human desire appears to spring out, fully formed, from some sort of primordial, trance-like, naïve, gestural state.
S. Teddy D.
Padang, 1970.
The painting, ‘Orang Hamil Juga Bisa’, by S. Teddy D. is an audacious statement about the very act of creating art in itself. Here, the artist is confronted by the blank canvas, as he prepares to make his first mark.
Ugo Untoro
Purbalingga, Central Java, 1970
‘Rain Conductor’ is a ‘magical’ work, in which the shaman, holding his forked twig, appears to be calling on the mystical powers of the universe to bring down a torrent of rain. The painting has a quiet subdued mystery.
Roberto Coda Zabetta
Biella, Italy, 1975.
In his work, ‘Tancho Kohaku’, Zabetta uses two images, a koi fish and the sketch of a face, and combines them to signify, in a semiotic method, a new message. Yet, the work also allows for a multiplicity of meaning.
Yuswantoro Adi
Semarang, 1966.
‘Army Look’ is a strong painting that imagines a sickness underlying military power. A child is put forth as a call to fight all power. There is blankness in the child’s eyes. An impression is given that power is weak.
As a survey of recent ‘contemporary’ Indonesian art the exhibition is very revealing, skeptical, and offers a critical view of the artists’ world. Maybe, Indonesian artists have at last an opportunity to comment on Indonesian society without censure. The show is highly recommended.
