Dewa Ngakan Ardana turns garlic into art
Dewa Ngakan Ardana turns garlic into art
Carla Bianpoen, Contributor/Jakarta
As garlic is transformed into stirring art that refreshes the
soul in the exhibition hall of CP Artspace Jakarta, one might
wonder whether the artist of the garlic on canvas is aware of the
healing powers of this humble ingredient of fine food.
The history of garlic goes back to antiquity and while it is
an important ingredient for fine food, there is also a widespread
belief that garlic is a preservative against evil influences and
attacks. In writings from early civilizations, we know that
garlic was also a prominent medicine.
The wisdom of the ancients was confirmed in modern times when
the microbiologist Louis Pasteur put a few cloves of garlic into
a dish full of bacteria. A few days later, he found a clear zone
of killed bacteria around each clove. Both before and after that
discovery, garlic preparations have been used to disinfect wounds
and to treat illnesses from cholera to cancer.
It is safe to say that Dewa Ngakan Made Ardana, the artist
behind the exhibition at CP Artspace, probably knows nothing of
all that.
For him, garlic has been part of his life since he was a
little boy, a matter of survival so to say.
It was garlic that his mother brought to the market to earn a
living, and garlic it was that took Dewa to the market to help
his mother. And so, this humble but important ingredient became
the object for his artistic urges, revealing the garlic's process
through its various stages of life, and on the way transforming
from photo-realistic image to forms where feeling and sensitivity
evoke an inexplicable stir in the viewer.
As humble as the white onion, Dewa is also as honest as his
object. No, no, he says, dismissing the suggestion that the
garlic has become a metaphor to express the inner waves of his
soul. "I just take the onion from various perspectives," he says,
but admits to a dramatic touch in the blowing up of sizes.
In the exhibition hall of CP Artspace, Dewa's works of the
garlic vary in size from 680cm x 300cm all the way to 80cm x 60
cm.
On the canvases that he has colored in off-white, light
yellow, light orange and light green, Dewa lets the garlic --
colored in diluted burnt sienna -- float single or in pairs. The
vast planes sometimes consist of three panels, of which two
panels are left empty, leaving the third panel to the garlic,
which seems to float in an empty space.
The gentle compassion with which the artist carefully places
the garlic in the large panel, the meticulous precision with
which he lets the peel fall off the garlic, the sensuous turn in
the garlic's tail, and the delicacy in revealing the beginning of
its decay, all this reveals the artist's intense relationship
with the onion.
This is also evident in the stirring installation of the
suspended three-dimensional garlic made of fiber that seems to
have burst into two parts. Placed high up at the end of the hall,
it is like a metamorphosis of the garlic into a butterfly moving
through the air.
It seems that the 24-year-old Dewa Ngakan Made Ardana, who
blends his life as an onion seller with that of his academic
training at the Indonesia Fine Arts Institute in Denpasar, has
taken vast steps since his debut at the CP Biennale in 2003 when
his garlic onions were a welcome alternative.
Now, while he continues to engage in the garlic, his works are
grander, the images even more stirring than before with spaces
that accentuate the dramatic in the works.
Dewa's art at the CP Artspace signals the beginning of a great
artist. Let's hope he won't be spoiled by success. Keeping within
the boundaries of his true self will be crucial for continuing
the authenticity of his art.
Spaces in-between, May 5 until May 26, at the CP Artspace,
Jl. Suryopranoto 67A, Central Jakarta, Contact: tel. 3448126,
ext. 604