Chusin delves deeper into body of work

Chusin delves deeper into body of work

David Kennedy, Contributor, Jakarta, d_kenn@yahoo.com

Chusin Setiadikara likes to shock people. When the 53-year-old
artist from Bandung starts a new painting he looks for something
different that will challenge and disturb the viewer.

Two recent works by the artist, Float & The Might, currently
on display at Galeri Nasional in Central Jakarta as part of the
CP Open Biennale 2003 exhibition, certainly achieve just that
effect.

Chusin has placed realistic, larger than life portraits of
giant nudes in awkward surrealist poses. The audience, drawn to
the ghost-like transparency of the bodies, feels compelled to
delve deeper into what is going on in the pictures. The bodies
seem to be off balance as if falling; they also appear serene and
strangely beautiful.

"The audience sees the image and knows it is different but
they don't know why," says the quiet-spoken artist, adding that
people become curious and look for explanations. The painter is
at the National Gallery this week participating in discussions
and tours of the exhibition.

In the exhibition Chusin's recent work goes beyond simple
realistic representation of bodies to explore the tensions that
exist in people. He creates a transparency effect in the
portraits through what he calls "a technically very difficult
process", using light and complex tones which render the
paintings realistic but at the same time surreal and almost
unimaginable.

The last time the artist exhibited at Galeri Nasional was in
2002 with a solo exhibition of hyper-realistic paintings entitled
Post-Photography Realistic Portrayal, but since then he has moved
on to new things. His inspiration comes from many sources which
are constantly changing, but the basis of his work is from
Eastern philosophy.

"I always use the philosophy of yin and yang. It's about the
balance between strong and weak, light and dark and man and
woman," he says. "Recently I have started to move on to something
other than realistic painting. It is difficult to say what as I
just follow my sensibilities and instinct... interaction with the
outside world is very important."

Born into a large family in Bandung, Chusin's passion for
painting began very early, partly due to an older brother who
used to paint at home and read art books. Becoming an artist was
always Chusin's "obsession" though he received no formal art
education apart from a period of training under the senior
painter Barli Sasmitawinata in the Rangga Gempol Studio in
Bandung.

He moved to Bali in 1987 and like many of his peers he saw the
exotic island as an ideal location for an artist. Today however
Bali provides no specific inspiration for his work which he says
focuses on contemporary issues which he could paint anywhere.

It is perhaps due to leaving his hometown of Bandung, combined
with his reputation for being a maverick painter, that Chusin
describes himself as an outsider. In the past his paintings have
included Ikan Asin (Dried Salted Fish), associated with bad
smells and the diet of the poor, as a metaphor for his own sense
of marginalization.

"Wherever I am it's not really my place; there is a distance
between me and my surroundings, the government, political things,
everything, also art," he says adding that it is through his art
that he tries to bridge this gap and express himself.

However, living in Bali has provided some inspiration for
Chusin's recent work though not from the most likely of corners.
He sees the rich cultural traditions of the Balinese, coupled
with the islanders growing desire for all things modern, as a
source of tension. Not surprisingly, given his interest in
contemporary art and modern themes, this tension is often
reflected in his work.

In Traditional Market, painted during 1997 and 1998, the
period of the monetary crisis and the resignation of then
president Soeharto, he depicted an old market which was
demolished to make way for a modern supermarket. An aerial view
shows local people scrambling about buying and selling food. In
stark contrast a spaceship, from the popular American science
fiction television series Star Trek, jets off into the sky far
away.

"It shows the tension between Western modernity looking
outward into space while everyone here is thinking about their
own situation on the ground," he says explaining that traditional
markets were particularly affected by the crisis.

Chusin believes the monetary crisis marked a turning point in
the development of Indonesian art and resulted in artists
becoming more engaged with the world around them.

"Art became less closed. Before that few artists wanted to
participate in politics; they just worked in their studios. Maybe
it's subjective but it just seemed that by the year 2000 artists
were ready to change and they learned how to interact with the
outside world, even outside of Indonesia," he says.

Without regular changes in artistic direction, Chusin feels
that he gets stuck.

Constant interaction with modern life through the media,
debates with peers and travel abroad provides him with a
continuous flow of inspiration with which to feed his creativity;
his childhood obsession with art remains unabated and he follows
art exhibitions around the world whenever the opportunity arises.

He exhibited at the prestigious Fukuoka Asian Triennale in
Japan in 1999 and more recently at the Circle Point (CP)
Foundation Artspace in Washington DC last year.

Given his insightful explorations of identity and modernity,
Chusin could be seen as a natural choice of ambassador for CP,
the Indonesian art foundation based in Washington, which
challenges what it sees as Western domination in international
art.

Chusin seems unperturbed by this perceived domination. This
most important thing in his view is the spirit behind the art
which, he says, has a unique Eastern flavor in Indonesia.

"In the East, peoples' everyday life is not traditional any
more. Our culture has naturally changed but we've developed our
own forms of artistic expression which are quite different to
those in the West."