Sun, 09 Jul 2000

Dodo Abdullah captures street life on canvas

BANDUNG (JP): Like other big cities in this country, Bandung also enjoys art exhibition euphoria. Not one day passes without an art exhibition, especially those featuring paintings.

About 40 works of Dodo Abdullah are on display at Galeri Bandung from June 20 through July 10. Through his paintings, Abdullah portrays everyday scenes from people's lives: crowded streets, shops along the streets, traffic jams, sidewalk vendors, narrow streets, villages of poor fishermen, laborers and others.

In most of his paintings he uses watercolors with some dominant colors of ocher, purple or purplish. This has been rarely "enjoyed" by other artists. The average size of his work is between 70 cm by 70 cm and the biggest is about 80 cm by 90 cm. The presence of people dominates his paintings. It seems that he is very much influenced by his surroundings -- the crowded neighborhood of Cicadas. Becak drivers, street vendors and flutists are his favorite subjects. He paints human beings as if he is obsessed with human existence.

"In his expressionistic style, he always states the existence of movement," Eddy Hermanto, an art critic and painter, explains. "He always enjoys painting in watercolor. He always records anxiety, gloomy situations and pluralities."

If he chooses to paint an example of gloomy human existence, he does not want to become "a hero who introduces the bitter life of the underprivileged" to the public. He is innocent and honest. He only records his surroundings, puts his love and attention into painting what he has witnessed and the rest is up to the public. He does not demand anything in return. If his teacher, Jeihan, comes with a gigantic canvas, strong in self-confidence and yet gentle in his touch, then Abdullah is the opposite. If Jeihan could be compared to a banyan tree, then Abdullah would be the green grass in our yard. When the grass is given attention, we see its strength, its tenacious roots and its cute stranded flowers pointing to the sky. Abdullah is a beautiful artist, and his life is like Nashar, the silent, Sufi artist. His exhibition of paintings, which are surprisingly very inexpensive -- between Rp 800,000 and Rp 3 million -- is his desire to share his understanding of life with others. And he does it with all his innermost emotions.

His 1984 painting titled Banceuy is likely to be the masterpiece of this exhibition. It is a painting of the old Banceuy jail, where Sukarno was once detained during the Dutch era. The painting shows a corner of Jl. Banceuy and Jl. ABC in Bandung. Abdullah is perceptive in portraying the corner since he could easily expose the high walls of Banceuy, with barbed wires on top of the wall. He also put a guardroom in the corner of the jail. His depiction of the streets gives an impression of emptiness -- a hollow hole in his life. The walls are painted mostly in green, with a soft gradation from dark green to light green. His portrayal of the corner of the streets and the walls of the jail are impressive.

Abdullah is a man on the street -- and he is aware of it. He is just a man who paints common people and their surroundings, which are his surroundings, too. (Wawan S. Husin)