Bali gallery takes lead in promoting sketches
By Putu Wirata
DENPASAR (JP): The recent opening of Bali's first gallery promoting sketches and drawings should help these art forms, often derided by the local arts community.
Its name, Bali Mangsi, is from the Balinese word mangsi, referring to a local type of ink traditionally containing soot from oil lamps.
Owner Hartanto named this inaugural exhibition Garis Suci, or sacred line, and it features the works of two well-known Balinese artists, Nyoman Wirata and Made Budhiana.
The exhibition which opened in January will run to March 24.
This gallery is expected to take the lead in bringing sketches and drawings, formerly dismissed as unfinished visual creations, to the forefront of art interests.
Hartanto, a 42-year-old poet, said he had always dreamed of a "nonconventional art gallery to encourage young unknown artists."
He believed there was still a lack of the necessary support for the province's emerging artists, who were often entangled in financial dependency on gallery owners.
"I want to support those creative and talented artists who have just started in the world of art and who don't know how to protect themselves against the eagerness of the buyers or gallery owners," explained Hartanto, who is also a singer and writes on art.
His said his gallery would be different to others mostly focused on exhibitions of oils, watercolors, acrylic or mixed media works.
"Bali Mangsi will only focus on sketches and drawings to raise appreciation of prepainting studies, because (sketches) are the images of the mind," he said.
Behind Bali Mangsi's massive front gates lies a regular house compound. A staircase leads to a space outfitted in soft colors, apparently chosen to avoid distracting from the artworks on display.
Almost every space on the walls is occupied by a sketch.
The artists chosen for the opening exhibit, Hartanto said, fit the bill because "both have strong characteristic lines".
The works of Made Budhiana, 39, a graduate of the Yogyakarta Institute of the Arts, reflect his concern for environmental issues.
His strong spontaneous lines result from dancing hands as he creates fish, people and landscapes. He rarely uses abstract images, but he said these too could depict natural settings. "The strange forms and composition do exist in nature. The forms exists in decaying wood, and stones where lichen grows, in the mud ..."
He has exhibited in various parts of his homeland, Europe and the U.S.
Nyoman, 40, is a high school teacher and a respected poet here.
Since 1975 he has been drawing wayang leather puppets and objects in strong contours which create stories laden with moral meanings.
Nyoman's sketches and drawings reveal his spontaneous but distinctive lines, known in Balinese Hindu mysticism as a type of calligraphy called rajahan.
Wirata's father was a shadow puppet maker, providing a convenient source of inspiration for his artworks. Fans say Wirata's sketches and drawings are similar to his poems as they exude the Balinese cultural spirit.
His poetry also attests to his knowledge of the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics, and the iconography of Balinese Hinduism.
Visitors to the exhibition opening snapped up the sketches of the two, priced from Rp 200,000 to Rp 2 million each.
Hartanto said it was an auspicious start in the effort to increase appreciation of the art.
"As (late renowned painter) Affandi said, a painting is a colored sketch. If one appreciate sketches, he or she will appreciate paintings more," he said.