about us
Woman In Blessing - March 2006
Woman in blessing : A MIXTURE OF FORM AND FEELING OF WAYAN SUJANA By Wayan Karja
Thirteen years ago when I started teaching at Indonesia School of Art in Denpasar I found a talented student.
I was then an instructor of the subject Painting III. Students did painting practice at Denpasar Art Centre. He is not only older than the other students but also had better ability in painting, both his technique and performance.
He was very skillful in using his brush and palette. His line, color and composition were incredible. He belonged to the first generation of students of painting program at the school.
Since then I observed the development of his works. His aunt, a teacher of the Painting High School of Denpasar asked me to supervise him because he was talented and he came of a family of artists.
Wayan Sujana is now my colleague, he is intimately addressed as Suklu. He was the student that I mention in the first part of my writing.
He now has become an active artist having a large view in working with past and present aesthetics mixed in a piece work of art.
The past should not be buried. Its aesthetic values should be preserved to become a guide to enrich the present. He has plaited art and culture. To give birth to intertwined works from aesthetics from different cultures. He is always restless and wants to make changes to come to form, technique, and content of his works. He began with studying traditional painting, and then moved to works to meet with the school curriculum of that day. In the process of his exploration he seems to have passed by full-circle transformation of form, from realistic to abstract or vice versa.
The works of art is produced from the works of art or other cultural aspect and environment. Influencing is a world of imitating and learning. Observing how Sujana develops reminds me of women deformation by Made Djirna in his exhibition in relation with Mother's Day ten year ago. This theme seems suitable with Sujana's life experience has inspired him in creating his subject matter. He further continuously explores the subject to create repetition on the basis of his restlessness. He sometimes put the accents as empowered by Made Wianta as centers of attention. Wianta, a painter frequently experimented in his works has inspired Sujana in mixing various feeling-and-form in his works. His restlessness to try various forms in multimedia and inter-media become his dough in creating his aesthetics. This makes Sujana's works not only two dimensional but also three dimensional, using multimedia and installation and performance collaboration.
His alternative choice can be mixed media, inter-media or multimedia and performance. Ceramics, rattan pleated, and rare things in Bali tradition are used as his subject matter of his creation, and combined with the ready-made things. Whatever creation he has made, whatever process he has gone through, Sujana is a diligent painter in combining things and mixing various dough and form technique. His experiment and exploration move on and become “Fashion Show”.
The exhibition of Fashion Show takes place at The Arya Seni Gallery. Sujana exhibits 17 works with the minimum sizes 60 cm and 200 cm.
In his fashion show he tries to open himself widely for the diversity of form and technique. With a high flexibility he shows that his art is free from dogmas or Bali tradition, not even by the modern avant garde. On the contrary, he combines, re filters, and re composes art form and art process of his past, put in the present phenomenon. He is sensitive to the changes in cultural structure of his environment. At least he has worked hard to open himself and performs as a painter of the present global era..
The culture of being beautiful and attractive is present everywhere. The beauty salons can be found in the village, the celebrity's idol, performing themselves as celebrities, reflected in the society. Style and fashion appear everywhere in all walks of life., especially among the young. Fashion show is very popular. People from Kindergarten to university students compete in fashion shows. This phenomenon becomes the background for Sujana's paintings.
The objects of women are used to give a sample to say that beauty attached to woman's imagination. or a woman is identical with beauty.
One side of style or trendy is most dominant in a woman's life. He wants to perform himself not only as a painter but also a fashion designer with the accessories of his painting competence. He is neither a feminist nor a fighter for emancipation. He does not degrade himself by using women as the object, but he borrows woman's form to accommodate and recombine his various painting skills to glorify diversity and intertwine various form-feeling.
Reproduction and recombination seem to express his mastery of repetition technique as performed before. Figure is performed to give the impression of multicultural components and plurality, in different spans of space and time. The aspect of cultural pluralism is performed through the eyes of Balinese artist who has multi-skills to synchronize all aspects that have been prepared. Let us look at what he has done in mixing various art feelings. He was not born at the age of “nano-nano” (candy with a mixture of tastes) or the taste of “gado-gado” (salad with peanut sauce), but a recipe and the concept of Bali lawar (raw pork prepared with a mixture of ingredients).
Wayan Karja
painter
lecturer and The Dean of Faculty of Art and Design, Indonesia Institute of Art, Denpasar
