Artist Dodog Soeseno's imagery of a fertile Eden

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.