Artist Dodog Soeseno's imagery of a fertile Eden

By Carla Bianpoen

JAKARTA (JP): Traditionally, the Garden of Eden is interpreted as a place of great happiness, the abode of the earth's first creatures. Many also believe it was this garden where humankind became forever marked with sin.

In the view of the Indonesian painter Dodog Soeseno, however, the garden is a space where a man's fantasies may dwell and find bliss, or frustration.

Taman Tertutup (The Closed Garden), as the artist has titled his solo exhibition now running at Duta Fine Arts Gallery here, is a place the man has created to be alone with his beloved. Nobody should be allowed to even peep in, for here his hidden desires and fantasies are to be free to flow. Not quite as free as the man would wish, though.

Aroused by intense desire, his imagery transcends the loved one into a being with the highest virtues. The lush paradisiacal flora appear in shapes likening abstract forms of the human genitalia. But don't expect sexual desire depicted as the perverse or the macabre, for Dodog Soeseno's garden is of a different kind. It is one where respect for women makes the fantasies appear natural and clean.

Dodog Soeseno's works represent a mature man's fantasies painted in the mode of the naive, almost awkward like a child's. Yes, admits Dodog, a man often feels uncertain when it comes to relationships with a woman. Dodog's view may be a personal perspective which he wishes to share with others. He does so, using abstract lines to hold together a juxtaposition of thoughts and wishes, and soft colors to accentuate the romantic atmosphere, or vibrant red to denote emotions.

Symbols take a significant role in Dodog's expressions on canvas. He uses them as metaphors for the human genitalia, but also to signify certain features or values. They all relate to the erotic desire of a man for a woman. Among the recurrent symbols is the triangle, which several traditions honor as a symbol of fire, of the heart, but mostly for the male sexual organs when its point faces upwards, and for water and the female sexual organs when it points downwards.

For Dodog Soeseno who once lived at the foot of the Merapi volcano, the point-up triangle is a male form, and one that relates to ambition and ejaculation. Other symbols used are unicorns for power, and conical objects for Astarte, the Canaanite love and fertility goddess.

There is no doubt that the artist is a romantic of sorts, and one devoid of the usual power stigma attached to the male. I love you 888 reads one canvas on which the contours of a nude appear in white, against a grey-white flash of light. A yellow faceless figure indicates the man, whose big, left hand stretches as if begging for an alm. The man figure is set in a dark blue with fire red between the two figures.

As well, between them is also a twig sprouting from a well, and symbolic of the creative source of women. Little leaves and flowing lines and the color combination denote the romantic atmosphere. In the same spirit are the 120 x 140 sized canvases titled Be My Queen, Rainbow, Love Letter and Wishing Wheel.

More erotic are his 24 x 32 mixed media on paper. The straight, bold lines emanate determination, but all the time there is the notion of the natural, and in keeping with a woman's virtues, and dignity. One such work shows a woman's head above a poodle, with a point-up triangle next to her shoulder. From the poodle, vagina-shaped twigs rise up against a grid in bold lines.

Particularly impressive is the work titled Blond Woman (offset lithography, silkscreen and gold leaf, 56 x 76 cm), in which all the features of Dodog Soeseno's work can be recognized. This includes the notion of batik , and dots vibrating the sparkle of energy flowing all throughout.

Although this Garden is primarily meant as a private place for the man's imagery to freewheel, there is another side of it that he wishes to highlight. He does so with the grid, which is present in almost all of his mixed media works. The artist says, the grid forms the limit to one's desires. The grid is the border between the man's fantasies and the woman's sacred domain.

A man can only enter a woman's sacred garden if he is worthy of entering. "He must prepare himself thoroughly, lest the doors to her garden remains closed," says Dodog Soeseno.

The artist, born in Surabaya in 1953, is a graduate of the Indonesian Fine Arts School in Yogyakarta and the Academy for Plastic Arts in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He lives and works in the Netherlands.

The exhibition is at Duta Fine Arts Gallery, Jl. Kemang Utara 55A, South Jakarta, until Aug. 23.