Artist creates abstraction of Merapi winds

By Sri Wahyuni

YOGYAKARTA (JP): For the Javanese, Mount Merapi is more than just a volcano. For many residents of this ancient city Merapi, some 20 kilometers to the north, houses an invisible "kingdom" and there lives a king and his subject. This mystical belief is especially true for those living on the slopes of the highly active volcano.

Yogyakartans who hold traditional mystical beliefs, including the royal family, regularly go to Merapi to make offerings. The ritual, called Labuhan, takes place on a regular basis at Kinahrejo at the foot of the volcano. Believers pray for prosperity and peace.

It is this traditional belief which has inspired a 40-year old Australian artist Peter Adsett in his art works which are on display at the Ardiyanto Gallery until Dec. 11.

"Merapi was instantly mysterious to me as one could never quite see it. Only occasionally did it reveal itself when the cloud moved west," Adsett said at the opening of the exhibition on Nov. 27.

Opened by the Australian Embassy's Cultural Consul Gregson Edwards, the exhibition features seven paintings entitled Wind Number 1 to Wind Number 7.

The setting of the exhibition has mystical nuances. Adsett, for example, places traditional offerings like flowers and incense under the paintings. The distant sound of a Javanese gamelan orchestra creates an even more mystical atmosphere.

Adsett performed some Javanese rituals before he started painting Merapi. To better understand the mythology of he also accustomed himself to gamelan music. He listened to the music for three weeks while he did the paintings. He also visited Merapi "to hear the wind".

"His visits were spiritual as he also did meditation," a gallery official said.

"On coming to Indonesia, I reflected on the words of Nganyinytja, a traditional woman elder of the Pitjantjatjara people of Central Australia, who told me that to paint a country one must come with an open heart and mind. You must let the wind speak to you and you will hear the voice of the land and then you will understand," Adsett said.

"So I had to listen to the wind. It was in the listening of wind and gamelan that the wind began to create its space," he added.

That explained why Adsett chose Kartika Affandi's studio in Cangkringan, a village at the foot of Merapi, to accomplish his works. It was also the place that he, his wife, three-and-half year old daughter and two-and-half year old son have stayed over the last four months. He observed Merapi through the studio's large window.

For Adsett, the process of the painting seems to be all that matters in his entire works. The process, he said, is what his painting is.

"I'm not interested in abstraction in terms of picture making. That is a gestalt concept of form. My painting, instead, attempts to show the process by which I undo form and place the representation system in conflict with the real."

By doing so he hopes to unmask the condition of painting that, according to him, is locked into the real and can lead to a painting's rebirth.

"These paintings, The Seven Winds of Merapi, are a process where the painting becomes a performing of a genre. They are continually arriving. Like wind, it is not stable or controlled by space. It has no boundaries and like cloud, it is tied to no nation. Deep within nature lies the language of creation that speaks to all cultures," Adsett said.

According to Adsett, the first four paintings,Wind Number 1 to Wind Number 4, describe the four natural directions of the winds that Merapi has, namely the winds of the north, south, west and east. The last three paintings -- Wind Number 5 to Wind Number 7 -- describe the winds that Merapi creates.

The paintings are a collection of light spots, mostly white, on dark backgrounds, mainly black. The brush strokes show the difference between the first four paintings and the last three ones.

The first four, for example, display more static spots, and the spots seem to move to the same direction. While last three have more dynamic spots.

"In the last three paintings, if you look at it, it is as if you're inside the stream, you are inside Merapi. It is because it was Merapi that created the winds," Adsett said.

Dwi Marianto of the Yogyakarta-based Indonesian Arts Institute (ISI) said Adsett's paintings are a subjective interpretation of the ideas of the Merapi and its winds.

The strength of the paintings, according to him, is apparent when they all are put together. Each individual piece of the paintings has its own character and generates a distinctive energy.

Marianto also sees that optical effects dominate the surface of Adsett's paintings as indicated by the spots of contrasting colors throughout it.

"In seeing the contrasting patterns of colors, the viewers will be deceived by an optical illusion. It is as if there are gray spots between white/light spots and the background. This is because the viewers' eyes are made to perceive black and black at the same time. And this deceiving the viewer is typical of Adsett's work," Marianto said.

One significant element of Adsett's work, according to Marianto, is that the artist is keen to see peculiarities in things that are part of a culture.

The space between them is so close therefore, that its significance and sensation are no longer apparent. "This is the advantage of a new comer who comes to a new place. He brings fresh patterns of looking," Marianto said.