Elok Berkelok (Lovely Curves)

A solo exhibition of Wayan Suklu

September 5 - 21  2008

Elok Berkelok : Wayan Suklu by Wang Zineng ‘I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well ... The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’ Albert Camus   In the closing scene of The Myth of Sisyphus, the philosophical essay by Algerian-born French author Albert Camus, the protagonist, Sisyphus trudges down to the foot of the hill where the large boulder he has been rolling uphill has descended, only to begin rolling it up all over again – an absurd closure that promises to replay ad infinitum. Resolutely, Sisyphus comes to the conclusion that ‘all is well.’ He settles for a certain absurd contentment, a contentment possible only when one is able to see one's life as a perpetual struggle, a perpetual groping towards something, in the absence of any promise of realisation or success. Although seemingly absurd, Sisyphus' fate and the state of mind he adopts are highly instructive. No meaning is to be found in the world beyond the meaning we give to it. This is the central idea of absurdism. If life has no meaning, would it not be best to give up living? Or give in to blind faith in our world, devoid of the assurance of rational purpose? Or might there not be a third choice – that is, accept the fundamental paradox and lead a fulfilling life in emulation of Sisyphus? Textual description cannot account for or illuminate Sisyphus' stance. It is a consciously chosen attitude towards life, underpinned by an intuitive philosophical outlook. Against all appearances, there is no inherent contradiction between a consciousness of the absurd and a tendency to respond to it positively. In fact such contentment is universal. And it is closely illustrated, both thematically and formally, in the body of works by Balinese artist, Wayan Suklu in this exhibition, where contentment in the world is construed as an interminable quest. Suklu made a particularly revealing statement about the act of painting during my studio visit to him in July. ‘My works are like my exhaled breath,’ he says. ‘They are full of my personal spirit.’ Here, the artist proclaims the intrinsic relation between his works, the practice of painting and creating as a natural, perpetual search. Very much like Sisyphus, each of Suklu's paintings – equated to breathing – is spontaneous and self-regulating, headed towards a certain something, ultimately seeking out an undeniable, yet difficult to pin down contentment. We turn to the flight of the dragonfly in works such as Arah Lima Sunyi and Musim Berganti Rupa. Suklu derived the motif of the dragonfly from an encounter with someone who told him how generations of luck would fall in his favour, when the person learned of the experience Suklu once had of being followed by dragonflies. Ever since that encounter, the dragonfly has never been far from Suklu's fascination. It appears in his canvases, always heading somewhere, in search of something, heightening the symbolic meaning of other pictorial elements. Like Sisyphus' boulder, the dragonfly seems to be leading the artist-protagonist – its creator – on an endless quest. A distinctive character of Suklu's works is the way they elude one's ability to view and read them literally, or as reflections of specific personal or world narratives. Suklu's visual language is symbolist, wherein the elements of the painted picture exist only in tenuous relationship with each other. In Menunggu Angin Febuari and Menunggu Angin Juli, the dragonfly seeks out mysterious vessels, which Suklu will only disclose as symbols of power. These two pictures do not bear dramatic narratives or iconic figures. Instead, they are a symbolist's personal cosmos. They never encourage us to literally decipher them. This is so even though the abstraction of ideas and the infusion of meaning must have taken place in Suklu's own creative process in arriving at these particular pictorial symbols.  One suspects that Suklu's real delight is in inviting his audiences to partake of the visually delightful and through this, to appreciate the very existential nature and sinuous loveliness of his personal journey through painting. Hence the exhibition title, Elok Berkelok (Lovely Curves), which also describes two recurrent compositional devices in his paintings. The first is the application of half-circles with a black marker pen, regularly and methodically, over the entire surface of his canvases. The application gives a textile-like appearance and lends a certain visual depth to the surface, upon which Suklu then paints other pictorial elements. Elok Berkelok also refers to the sense of flow achieved within Suklu's painted worlds, through the use of curves and circles rather than straight lines. The sense of curvature that Suklu builds up is intended to heighten the aesthetic experience, as we tend to associate curves and circles with softness and dynamism. Works such as Rupa Dibawah Rupa, Menjelang Senja 1 and Menjelang Senja 2 are conscientious of the interplay between form and surface. Elok Berkelok 1 and Elok Berkelok 2 revel in the delight of a pleasing arrangement, as does Musim Berganti Rupa.  To Suklu, ‘the act of painting is akin to meditation.’ It is a statement without any profound or fanciful theory to support it, but that does not stop Suklu from entertaining the idea. If we, for a moment, drop our personal assumptions and follow his train of thought, we might just discover something even deeper, even more intrinsic about the Sisyphean contentment that underpins his works. To paraphrase Camus, the endeavour towards the heights is in itself sufficiently satisfying. Wang Zineng is a Singaporean writer on art based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.