Suharmanto - Personality

In general Suharmanto’s works stand within the frame of realism, both in their visual expression and concept. His objects are taken from the daily reality of his surroundings. Marketplace and parking area are his favourites. Marketplace women labourers, sellers, pedicabs, bicycles, and motorbikes are his close friends. The glistening light emitting from bicycles’ (or pedicabs’) stainless steel is his weapon. A fold of a piece of cloth and pattern of weaving are expressions of his overflowing emotion.

The year 1998 is the beginning of Suharmanto’s professional career in Indonesian art.

At that time his works used a variety of objects representing his interest in environmental matters, especially since he himself was so closed to (if not a part of) the lower economic class. A greater part of his ideas described the reality of street life using a strong visualisation, in which the objects’ details were achieved through a skilled realist technique. All his canvases were filled with objects originally taken with his camera (he always uses a camera to record his objects and then paints them on the canvas as his method of working).

In short, his visual concept then was more for achieving a perfection in his realist technique than any other non-technical matters.

His present works can be considered more as the “second phase” of what he has done so far. It is a transitional period in term of his visual concepts or ideas. The similarity with his former works is in the fact that he is still presenting reality in a strong sensibility of object’s details, while its difference lies in the manifestation of pattern of thought in representing his main objects. His objects are represented more dominant now with their settings disappear into empty spaces. The “empty space” here cannot be interpreted as a space without visual association but should be assumed more as a flat space that changes the environmental situasion which was painted in his previous works, or as a conceptual space of the artist.

In his previous works marketplace, parking space, the streets, existed in all their details as setting to his canvas. But now he changes the setting and uses it as part of his main objects. The idea of a marketplace is pictured/represented now in the kind of dress worn by the marketplace women labourers, or the bicycle with the farmer’s bamboo hat (Javanese: caping) on its handle, or the woven bamboo baskets for trading (Javanese: kronjot) on the bike’s back seat; these are manifestations of the who and the where of each painting.

The background of the painting is the space used for the expression of the artist’s visual concept. The structure of the colours in each painting, whether the emphasis is on their texture or not, is the space where Suharmanto expresses his personal anxieties. The colours of red, blue, yellow, white or the combination of them are representations of the artist’s inner self that sometimes appears restless, happy, or gloomy. The colour red does not only function to maximize the appearance of the main object but also to tie in the idea and its visual expression. The same applies to the setting in which the colour has a kind of pseudo-texture, as in the form of flowing liquid (painted like sweat), crosses (painted like a sign for counting numbers), splashes (as if referring to the rain or something spiritual), etc. All these are tied in together as a story.

Now what about the main objects of the paintings? It is obvious that the main objects, such as the marketplace women labourers, children, pedicab drivers, bicycles, and motorbikes, are not only representations of Suharmanto’s empathy towards the lower class people, where he also belongs, but they are also representations of universal ideas such as poverty, friendship, loneliness, spirituality, love poetry, etc.

One unique feature of Suharmanto’s “second phase” works is the emergence of a new phenomenon of the memory of the individual, created through the realm of daily reality and imagination. In his “first phase” period Suharmanto expressed social issues through a more complete visualisation, without providing much space left for the imagination; this is the reason why I call this period as the “reality phase” of his creative career.

Now there are so much personal elements present in his works, represented by an overflow of imagination, concepts, and various forms of personal expressions, through the use of a variety of colours, the poses of his objects, as well as the perspective used in painting objects such as the pedicabs, bicycles and motorbikes.

This is Suharmanto’s “SECOND PHASE”: PERSONALITY.

Mikke Susanto

art observer and a lecturer at ISI Yogyakarta