'I Ching' in Yayat Surya's visual representations

By M. Dwi Marianto

DENPASAR, Bali (JP): The paintings that Yayat Surya has been displaying at Jezz Gallery until July 31 have provoked lots of discussion on their peculiarities.

Born in the West Java town of Cirebon in 1968, Yayat has developed an artistic style that is a combination of modern painting techniques with the spirit of I Ching (an ancient Chinese book on wisdom and changes, which remains in use).

He mixes hexagram symbols of I Ching with colored geometric shapes. How does I Ching inspire Yayat and how does he communicate I Ching, a classic Tao teaching, through his artwork in a dynamic and creative fashion?

The structure of Yayat's works consists mostly of vertical and horizontal lines and only few have diagonal lines. Yayat, who learned art from Rastika -- a glass painter from Cirebon, uses primary and secondary hues in coloring. Lines are structured geometrically without conventional dark-bright shades.

There are no figures representing flora or fauna in his works.

In the modern artistic discourses, Yayat's paintings may be classified into Orphist or maybe the abstract "hard edge" genre which developed in Europe between the 1920s and 1930s.

The vertical and horizontal lines and the plain coloring make Yayat's works reminiscent of those of the De Stijl school, which are common in the works of artists Piet Mondrian, Van Doesburg and Rietveld.

In a specific period in his career, Mondrian created paintings which consisted solely of horizontal and vertical lines.

The De Stijl school was very much influenced by the Neo- Platonic-philosophical thinking of Schoemaeker, a mathematician who once wrote, " ... Two things that are fundamentally different that shape the earth are horizontal and vertical lines. The horizontal line represents the earth orbiting the sun, while the vertical line represents the journey of light from the sun to the earth."

Yayat Surya's painting titled Kesenangan, 2001 (Fun, 2001) can well illustrate why his works remind the viewer of De Stijl disciples, such as Van Doesburg, Rietveld and especially Piet Mondrian.

Kesenangan is made up of vertical and horizontal lines with primary and tertiary colors. It is simple. Rational. The lines and coloring are all even, just like paint on a wall.

The difference between Yayat's works and Mondrian's is the placement of the hexagrams at important plains of his drawing. This is Yayat's significant "discovery": developing geometric compositions based on a I Ching hexagram.

The hexagram is one of the I Ching geometric patterns consisting of 6 horizontal straight lines. At a glance, the symbolic hexagrams look like the chip of a cellular phone. In the I Ching tradition, there are 64 hexagrams, each of which has a unique shape. Each hexagram has its own characteristics, name and meaning.

I Ching can be read as a "book about all changes" and was developed on the philosophical basis of yin and yang representing the balanced change and movement of the universe. In this context, the human being is regarded as matter whose chemical balance keeps changing. He or she ages.

Each of the 64 hexagrams has its own explanation. Every one of them is made up of two trigrams, namely a configuration of three horizontal lines -- either intact or having a cut in the middle.

In the Chinese tradition, I Ching is understood as Tao. According to the belief, we forever walk on Tao. But as Tao has a broad meaning, the I Ching is broken down into trigrams that form hexagrams.

There are two ways by which the appropriate hexagram is chosen to solve a problem: by tossing a coin or by scrambling yarra sticks the way a fortune teller uses cards.

Yayat will do a solemn consultation with I Ching when solving a problem. This aims at ensuring that the I Ching (hexagram) he chooses is the result of spiritual power within him.

For Yayat, the 64 hexagrams are his inspiration. They are rich in shape and meaning. Each of a pair of hexagrams can have a completely different meaning, or can complement each other.

He makes the hexagram as a subject or background.

In Meningkat (Rising), Yayat makes a composition from several hexagrams. There is a three-dimensional illusion. Memahami Hukum 2001 (Understanding the law, 2001) is one of Yayat's most dynamic works, consisting of horizontal planes containing hexagrams paralleled with a checkered chessboard-shaped plane.

Yayat is also innovative in terms of medium. Not only does he use a conventional canvas but also transparent plexiglass (mica) where he paints the way a glass painter does. With this medium, he has developed yet another technique: combining geometrical hexagrams and other patterns.

Even though he began exploring I Ching for works of art only two years ago, Yayat has made significant breakthroughs.

He says he has rediscovered himself in I Ching, which he describes as his "spring of inspiration that freed him from illiteracy".

"It's like the alphabet, which contains only 26 letters, yet people can write unlimited sounds, or only with 'do re mi fa sol la ti' sounds people can create unlimited songs," he says.

-- The writer is an art observer and works for the research center of the Indonesian Art Institute (ISI), Yogyakarta.