Father, son show individual art styles

By Pavan Kapoor

JAKARTA (JP): Every once in a while, in the garden of the art world there blossoms a new fragrance - a new art gallery has opened it's doors. It is an occasion for painters and art lovers to feel an uplifting of the spirit at the revelation that the winter of crisis has taken one step back from the arena of Indonesian art and spring is not far behind.

The Linda Gallery is one such blossom that has recently opened in Jl. Kemang Raya. The gallery is currently displaying the works of two artists from one family in an exhibition quite simply entitled Father and Son that will run until Sept. 23.

While Wayan I Pengsong, the father, displays a quiet romanticism in his obsession with the enchanting island of Lombok, Mantra, his son, displays a more hard-core hedonistic attitude in his abstract paintings.

A sonorous contrast to Pengsong's gentle and pacifying pastel shaded paintings is Mantra's bold, colorful and wild oils - as if trying to sound out an individualistic identity. Mantra's works are usually big in size and are dominated by as few as three or four different colors.

The series on figurative art entitled Sexy 1,2,3.26 is quite simple in varying tones of blue and white. In easels which are more than a meter long and as wide, Mantra seems to make a deep study of a certain posture of a woman and then in a few accurate, quick brushstrokes creates her mystery on the stark white canvas as a contrasting backdrop.

Although each painting is done in the same style and in the same varying tones of blue, it is the mood, feeling and sentiment that each feminine shape extends to the viewer that magnetizes him to pause for an elongated ponderous moment. The different poses of this series would make it attractive for a collector to have at least a couple of them hanging on a spacious wall.

The other paintings such as The New Cat and The Top of the Hill portray Mantra's love for bold, flat color. Usually using big canvases and leaving plenty of negative space, this is perhaps Mantra's way of telling the onlooker to focus on the abstract details usually set within a certain limited space.

In Mother and Child, Mantra converges an illuminating turquoise blue into the heart of a darker, circular shape that could have been made unintentionally in the shape of a womb with the lighter blue symbolizing the fetus reposing in the womb of his mother.

However, although Mantra has entitled all of his paintings and expects the viewer to splurge into the readings of his mind and follow them onto his easels, it is easier to regard Mantra's work as simple, symbolic representations and to use their aesthetic qualities to harmonize and match the color of the walls with them.

However, Pengsong, who is a more senior artist, has once again made an outstanding impact with the sheer simplicity of his spirit and distinctly characteristic style. Pengsong is quite clearly enamored by Lombok traditions, the houses and architecture, the almost-too-beautiful women, and manages to arrange his visual images in monochromatic colors as inherent in the grayish and brownish scenes of Lombok.

Perhaps it is worth a mention that while art critics constantly compare the style of an artist to a renowned counterpart, in Pengsong's case one cannot help noticing his facial similarity to Picasso. And it is a further intriguing coincidence that both the names start with the letter P.

It would be safe to assume that Pengsong's paintings form an extensive corpus of Indonesian paintings because of his untiring, constant exploration and employment of ethnic potentialities and ethnic expressions by way of soul and spirit. To Pengsong's mind, Lombok is a never-ending source of inspiration and although the effects of involuntary globalization are pervasive, he skillfully re-imagines and reconstructs a world he once perceived and holds close to his heart. And that is perhaps why, as one observer said, his paintings are "dusty but clean and clear as if the sun never goes down there."

In paintings such as Models 1,2,3., the women who are carrying out various mundane tasks are so delicate and graceful, their high cheekbones and almond eyes so perfect, that they are almost much too beautiful to be true. However, so much beauty can never be a bad thing and it is not without reason that women often prominently feature in Pengsong's works.

In most of the paintings such as Upacara Perkawinan (Wedding ceremony), Gadis Nelayan (Fishergirl) and Istirahat (Taking a break), Pengsong's impressionistic tendencies loom superlatively. The brightness, the choice of monochromatic color, the texture of the ample negative space around the central focal issue and the sweet poetry of the wholesome image all become relevant when Pengsong explains their presence.

"I've seen how the people of southern Lombok (the Sasak) are always in trouble but their faces remain bright. A stubborn nature is merged into the gentle culture of the Lombok people."

The big easels vary with different texture. Sometimes it is a smooth slash of paint by a flat spade and sometimes rough and granular like dried cement. The textural exploration is apparently decisive in acknowledging his artistic sensibility.

The texture which tends to dominate every corner of the canvas sometimes gives the impression that Pengsong does not want to work them to the maximum, in spite of the expressive power which conveys gloom, gentleness or vexation. It is from here that Pengsong seems to learning to control energies, to leash the desires, and bring forth his sentiments in artistic expression with gay abandon.

The Linda gallery also houses the works of other artists on the second floor.