Embracing Nature’s Poem
Paintings by Nyoman Sujana Kenyem
At Ganesha Gallery, Four Seasons Resort, Jimbaran Bay
Tel: 701010
Born in Ubud in September 1972, Nyoman Sujana Kenyem belongs to a circle of contemporary Balinese artists whose work, while modern in spirit and execution, still retains the lyricism of a traditional past. Kenyem is one of the most prominent members of a new generation of Balinese artists who elected to study in the late 1990s in the newly opened Balinese branch of the Indonesian Art Academy (STSI), rather than journeying to Yogyakarta or Bandung, the home of Indonesia’s most famous art institutes.
Since he first successfully appeared in the art world in the 1990s Kenyem has won much national and international praise for the poetic beauty of his paintings. The subjects of each of his images, mirrored in titles like ‘Sentuhan’, Senyumanmu Cahaya’ and ‘Nostalgia’, are highly personal visualizations of feelings and emotions. Swirling leaves, flowers, human figures, and luminous celestial bodies flow with great abundance across his dynamic canvases.
It is obvious that Kenyem adheres to the ancient mystical belief that humans, and, in-particular artists, can best find their inspiration in nature. In the painting ‘Berdamai dengan Alam’ we see a large orb of flowers creating a veil for the sun. More flowers rain down like a yellow bead-like curtain. A black stallion rises up on its hind legs as if in defiance against a yellow-green background of leaves. Tiny dancing figures whirl in the tapestry. It is, indeed, this multiplicity of dimensions which gives Kenyem’s paintings their mystery and power. Within all of his works on display Kenyem’s canvases comprise of an abstracted background, detailed images of people or objects in the middle distance, and all veiled by a falling rain of flowers or leaves in the foreground, through which we must look to find the meaning of his work.
However, the question must be asked, what do these images of horses, dilapidated pushbikes, and famous or not so famous people all really mean? Perhaps Kenyem is acknowledging the fact that beauty and life, like all things, are transient. Perhaps, as in meditation, the artist is allowing our minds to wander. To make associations with his simple and everyday objects and images, while the profound and iconic symbols, such as the sun, the moon and the falling flowers, bring our focuses back to the centre, the beginning, and the end of all things. Nyoman Kenyem presents elegant and mysterious paintings for our deep contemplation.
Nowhere Else
Paintings by Samarpan
At Tony Raka Gallery, Jl. Raya Mas 86, Mas, Ubud
Tel: 7816785
The current exhibition at the Tony Raka Gallery, entitled ‘Nowhere Else’, presents paintings by the German artist Samarpan, who was born in Cologne in 1953, and studied at the Cologne College for Art and Design from 1975 to 1980.
In the accompanying catalogue, Indonesian art critic Arif Bagus Prasetyo suggests that we are “living in a contemporary world where the power of information, globalization and capitalism is dominating all aspects of human lives. As daily life grows more banal, banality is increasingly being accepted as normal. Nowadays, human life is a domain crowded by hedonists, worshippers of capitalism, and hunters of power. Under the banner of materialism and consumerism, the reality of contemporary life, along with its banalities, is marching forward to displace all things that are spiritual, sublime and mystical”.
Prasetyo also goes on to state that the creative urges of the artist Samarpan are directed towards “the search for visual forms, or representations”; the potential of coloristic surface-effects for generating spatial illusion and the invisible and mystical forces behind all things. Samarpan, by alternating large and small proportionally related colored rectangles, produces optically vibrating paintings that are in a highly complex condition of spatial flux. As we gaze at the paintings, forms move forwards and backwards, and seem to be endlessly reconfiguring themselves as different versions of the same painting. In canvases such as ‘Untitled 1 and 2’, it is possible to find vague allusions to some ‘real’ things, like fluorescent lights, stained glass windows, the landscape, or the horizon, without being able to read themproperly. Samarpan’s abstract compositions present a vivid world, a cosmos of color. It is almost as if the paintings are alive. As if a pulsing energy travels through them. These canvases are real objects of contemplation.
As far back as1914, the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was investigating the psychological power of color. His spiritual and aesthetic philosophy was to establish a new art form in which colors were to have autonomous values, and relationships, and an inherent symbolism. In paintings like ‘Untitled 3 and 4’ Samarpan demonstrates how factors of placement on the canvas, color, and hue, are an effective vocabulary through which he can compose his visual language and transpose his thoughts and feelings onto canvas. Color, with all of its meanings and implications, becomes Samarpan’s main vehicle for artistic expression. For Samarpan, the rhythm of the proportionally related rectangular fields, and the alternation of color values between light and dark, corresponds to his emotionality.
Samarpan’s art reflects a subtle and authentic artistic process which gives meaning to a world that is increasingly losing its meaning. The paintings make us aware of the world’s capacity to generate illusions, visual tricks, and contradictions. His paintings transform our contemporary world from its banal state, into a world of visualized spirituality.
