Paintings by Putut Wahyu Widodo
At Tony Raka Art Gallery, Jl. Raya Mas No. 86, Mas, Ubud Tel: 7816785
There is a certain amount of slick commercialism within the images of Putut Wahyu Widodo as he is not only a professional painter, he is also a visual design editor working in a large media company in Central Java. Both professional disciplines demand a very high degree of creative sensibility, and Putut does both with strong passion and dedication. His images of male nudes are carefully studied and meticulously constructed and executed.
As a painter-cum-visual editor, Putut is especially aware and sensitive towards the power of images. In commercial photography and art, and in particular advertising, the meaning must be clear and distinct and most importantly must provoke a desire to consume. Similarly, Art can communicate feelings and emotions, or thoughts and ideas. These portraits exemplify a modern realism where graphic abstraction, semi-Cubist elements, and figuration meet to create images which are ‘less’ portraits of people and ‘more’ about the creation of a mood, an emotional state, and even alienation. The portraits are more than a mere visual artistic rendition of human gestures and poses. Putut’s task is to reveal what resides underneath the surface appearance of observed empirical reality. The images are mainly free of perspective and have an intensity of line, a flatness of form, minimal use of color, and most importantly, a harmony of all over design. An aesthetic concern that dominates his entire body of work. Even the picture frame seems to imprison the nude and the elements depicted, enhancing feelings ranging from the serene to uneasiness. Some of the images are physiologically unnerving.
Putut works with all kinds of digital imaging software. By exploring, exploiting, and experimenting with digitally created images, he is showing us how image making technology can help us to radically change our way of looking, and, thus, enhance our understanding of the world. His artworks reflect an intensive interrogation into our contemporary culture which is increasingly being governed by commercially produced images. Putut does not want to simply copy the work of a machine, but, he wants to illustrate the problems of converting a digitally produced image into an ‘artwork’. Consequently, in the artworks created for his exhibition, ‘Serene Bodies’, Putut attempts to marry the figurative or narrative contents of photography, with the abstract qualities of painting.
As the works ‘Daylight Fading’, ‘Waiting So Long’ and ‘No In Between’ demonstrate, Putut attempts to depict the ‘alienation’ and ‘self control’ of the modern human being in a contemporary society. Putut thinks that “the human body is a space for testing our behavior and recognizing ourselves, even our own sense of belonging to our own body”. Within these works, Putut apparently wishes to erase all the narrative associations which usually can emerge from a photographic image, and, instead, combine this ‘narration’ into a simplified unity of body language, as the subject matter. Putut is exploring a unified image of the human body to stimulate the viewers own sensations and our own unexpected perceptions. However, as the works ‘Groan’ and ‘Waiting Angel’ further demonstrate, Putut is also interested in capturing the character and expressions of the abstracted moment. By utilizing painting techniques such as cropping, placement, color, shape and form, then, by further applying coats of thin acrylic washes and sharp pencil markings to his artworks, Putut succeeds in creating images that do not represent a ‘natural’ object, but, rather express an exploration of a whole new sensual dimension.
Our World: Childhood Memories, Everyday Objects
Paintings by Uuk Paramahita and I Gede Pande Paramartha At Ganesha Gallery, Four Seasons Resort, Jimbaran Bay. Tel: 701010
While the artistic styles of the two Balinese artists, Uuk Paramahita and I Gede Pande Paramartha, are distinctly different, their thematic material and sources of inspiration are remarkably similar. In their exhibition at the Ganesha Gallery, both artists display a love of bright colors and enigmatic imagery. In works such as ‘Rude Devil’ and ‘Road Runner’ Gede Paramartha presents works which are derived from “reflections and images of my youth”. We are confronted with strange and whimsical beasts that could be from outer-space, the netherworld, an inter-active video game, or an electronic microscope. These images express a naïve cartoon-like love of shapes. While Gede’s images may appear guileless, careful examination reveals a sophisticated sense of color and complex design, which dances on the canvases surfaces with no pretence of depth. Also, of note, is Gede’s extravagant use of fluorescence paints which give a lovely fizz to his work.
Uuk Paramahita, in contrast, places his own colorful but usually less identifiable inhabitants in compositions that use stylized landscape features, such as rivers, islands, seas, forests and mountains. Uuk’s paintings evoke perspective but acknowledge the canvases’ two dimensional surface. Notably, in almost all of his works, such as ‘Between Dark Sides’ and ‘We Have A Nice Place’, a horizon line is defined which divides the sky from the earth or the sea. Sometimes these landscapes can almost give the appearance of musical scales, and can be populated with buildings, animals, and people. “My starting point is everyday objects that I make my own”, Uuk explains.
This exhibition abounds with delightful wit and humor. It is an exuberant display of youthful vibrancy and talent. It fully exemplifies the magic of the imagination, which can turn even the mundane into images of sophistication.
