Bonny Setiawan paints a changing Yogyakarta

Bonny Setiawan paints a changing Yogyakarta

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): Painting scenes of daily life in the rapidly
changing city of Yogyakarta, Bonny Setiawan emphasized certain
elements which he considers culturally significant or of personal
concern.

One of his strongest paintings depicts a wayang kulit
performance. It is set in a strong composition which includes the
stage, the backstage and the audience in one simple spatial
arrangement. In the upper part of the painting sits the dalang
(puppet master), the central figure. Above him appears the
"stage" of the wayang performance, with wayang figures arranged
in rows. The dalang himself is moving the two central characters
of the episode.

Below the dalang is what is known as the "back-stage" in
western theater. This part of the painting is filled with the
musicians, the sinden (singer) and the gamelan ensemble. Further
below, around the periphery of the mat where the musicians sit,
the audience can be seen watching the show as vendors mill about.

Many other wayang scenes appear in the exhibition, but the
most interesting one is a painting of a cardboard wayang vendor,
which shows a puppeteer showing a figure of Gatotkaca to three
boys who watch. Behind them, next to a screen filled with a row
of puppets, a man in black watches the children, looking
concerned.

Often Bonny shows scenes of daily life in Yogyakarta which are
starting to change and disappear. In one painting an exhausted
becak driver, cigarette in hand, awaits his next customer. In the
background, high rises appear signaling the rapidly developing
city of Yogyakarta. A crescent moon looms over the high rises.
Another painting shows bakul (street vendors) riding two delman,
horse-drawn carts, with buildings in the background.

A painting called Going to the Ketoprak (traditional Javanese
play) shows four figures lining up in front of a ticket counter.
Above the counter, the sign "Siswo Budoyo" indicates the venue of
the performance. Here, again, the attendant's head appears framed
within the counter's windows. It is clear that the painter does
not intend to present a realistic image of the subject matter.

In Bakul Jamu (Herbs Vendor), Bonny shows a jamu vendor
serving a customer. The main figures are large in the center of
painting, while others support the central theme. A few figures
are shown eating at a warung on the upper left corner of the
scene. The words Gudeg Djogja (a traditional dish of Yogyakarta)
are stenciled on the warung's muslin screen. A woman attending
the warung watches the scene outside her premises through a
square opening.

The depiction is handled in a way that seems typical of the
school of Yogyakarta, which includes M. Faisal, Yuni Wulandari
and Erica Hestu Wahyuni. Although these artists may not consider
themselves as one group, the art they produce is clearly similar
in style, using simplified figures and bold primary colors. Some
observers group these artist as "naif" painters. Bonny's work may
be classified in the same group as the other painters. However,
he also has a number of features which distinguish his work from
the three others. For example, when creating forms of figures,
Bonny often adopts the approach of the cubists. He segments a
figure into angular geometric planes so the figure appears as if
viewed from several different angles, not just by one fixed point
of view. Bonny's use of stenciled letters is also reminiscent of
the cubist paintings of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.

When depicting negative spaces, he utilizes a style skin to
Ries Mulders cubism. Mulder, who taught art at Bandung's
Institute of Technology in the 1950s, was known to divide
negative spaces into fields of color.

A couple in wedding attire appear in Yogyakarta Lovers. They
are placed in a setting reminiscent of Yogyakarta's Taman Sari
water palace. The rendering of the architectural blocks in a
nocturnal scene presents a dream-like quality akin to the works
of Giorgio de Chirico, albeit only superficially.

Bonny was born twenty-eight years ago in Wonogiri, Central
Java, into a family of artists. His father worked in the theater
and also painted, while his mother was a member of the Sanggar
Bambu painting studio. After completing high school, Bonny
entered the Indonesian Fine Arts Academy in Yogyakarta in 1987.

His style clearly reflects the influence of his Academy
training. Bonny paints Javanese subject matter using a technique
influenced by western art. While he has developed an artistic
style which is distinctly his own, it is still recognizable as
related to a collective regional style of the Yogyakarta artists.

However, Bonny does not only present traditional elements or
scenes. One interesting painting is a party at a discotheque in
Yogyakarta. Here the figures he renders are deformed, almost
amorphic, as they move on a spacious dance floor. Among them,
Javanese super-hero Gatotkaca meets his American counterpart,
Batman. Above the dance floor, on the trusses of the space's
structural support, a big band ensemble appears, channeling music
to the hall below it, in a composition reminiscent of Tisna
Sandjaya's etchings.

From this odd painting, it seems that Bonny is as interested
in cultural change as he is in the Javanese traditions he
normally displays. Therefore, not only his technique but also his
artistic style and subject matter seems to be open to change.

Bonny's paintings are on display at the Duta Fine Art Gallery
in Jakarta until Nov. 12, 1996.