Father, son show individual art styles

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.