Mangu casts off shackles of traditional Balinese

By Putu Wirata

DENPASAR (JP): Agung Mangu Putra, 35, a painter who graduated from the Yogyakarta-based Indonesian Arts Institute (ISI), has surprisingly succeeded in exploring themes and objects which are quite different from those usually worked upon by Bali-born painters in general.

While the latter usually explore Balinese religious icons because of their strong traditional bonds, Mangu has chosen fish, mountains, sand, stone, the sky and so forth in ways obviously showing that he has set himself free from the shackles of Balinese traditional culture.

"I don't reject Balinese traditional symbols. No, I don't. The fact is these traditional symbols simply don't attract me," he said, after realizing that he had never explored the themes originating in the culture of his place of birth.

In his exhibition at the Chedi Gallery, Payangan from Nov. 21 through Jan. 4, 1998, the themes center around fish, stones, mountains and the sky.

Mangu Putra was born in Banjar Selat, Sangeh village, Badung district, in 1963. After graduating from ISI, he returned here and took up a job as a graphic designer.

In his free time, he will take his brush and start painting but, of course, in this way he could not achieve his best in painting. Yet in 1994 one of his paintings Undersea Imagination (mixed media on canvas, 100 cm x 75 cm) was included as one of the top ten in the Indonesian Art Awards and this painting was exhibited in the ASEAN Art Award exhibition.

Nevertheless, Agung Mangu Putra was relatively unproductive. He spent most of his time doing his job as a designer.

"I used to contemplate my work as a designer. I felt then that if I continued to work as a designer I would never be able to express on canvas many of my ideas," he said.

Then he decided to spend more time painting. He took part in a number of joint exhibitions in a number of galleries throughout the country. Unfortunately, few collectors were then interested in his works. However, 1998 will be the year when Mangu's lucky star shines brightly. Chedi Gallery, a gallery in a hotel, has offered to exhibit his works.

"I have accepted the offer because the vision of the gallery is clear. It is not intended only for commercial and profit- seeking purposes," he said.

Mangu is exhibiting at Chedi Gallery over 20 of his paintings that depict nature, both inanimate and living: fish, mountains and the sea.

Why is he interested in fish? The inspiration stimulating him to paint fish was that a fish has a plastic shape. The shape of a fish can be easily represented by making only some free and simple strokes, a dot for the eye and a line for the fin or the tail.

Having painted his fish, Mangu began to explore "freedom without having to turn into an abstract painter." Yet, Mangu Putra has not drawn a fish in its realistic detail. A fish is simply a source of inspiration because in fact Mangu is fascinated by the entire environment where a fish exists: rocks, sand, bait, boats and so forth.

"While drawing these fish, I felt as if I had been really transported to the natural environment of the fish such as hard rocks and whitish and light brown sand, Also I was reminded of the lines of small fry I had just bought in the market, or even of the fishermen far at sea," he said.

In a work entitled Footprint in Sand, Mangu draws the shape of a small black fish. It simply lies on an expanse of dry sand. There is a line forming the shape of a poisonous snake on the left side. The footprints in the sand, given the color of dark and light brown with real sand as the medium, have become a sort of way for him to express hardness and scorching heat with which fishermen are acquainted.

However, in Fossil II and Fossil III, Mangu draws fish bones already turning themselves into old sediment. "When drawing this fossil painting, I felt as if I had been an archaeologist cleaning his discovery with a chisel or a broom," he said.

A mountain is another object he is interested in. "I greatly admire mountains because this silent giant body keeps in it an extraordinarily powerful force. I have nurtured an ambition to scale the mountain but this will never come true because I have a fear of heights," he said, honestly.

So, in his work called The Silence of Stone (oil painting on canvas, 80 cm x 100 cm, 1998), Mangu draws his mountain from a distant perspective. Visually, this work shows two perfect shapes of mountains: one is green with a crater at the top and the other is barren, also with a crater at the top. Behind the mountains there are white clouds floating in the blue sky.

"I can get to the top of a mountain only in my imagination," he added.

Mangu also exhibits in this solo exhibition his painting called Undersea Imagination, which earned in 1994 a citation in the Indonesian Art Awards. Of course Mangu is not a snorkeler or a deep diver.

Once in a while he saw films about underwater life where fish freely swim as if moving in an expanse of water forming a giant canvas. It is not easy to distinguish which are real fish and which are only heaps of stones or perhaps some garbage. It is this imaginative atmosphere that has inspired him to create this painting.

Now, in this era of reform some people may ask whether Mangu wishes to escape social responsibility as the themes he works on seem to be separate from the tumultuous social reality of today.

Indeed, he is no social activist but he is not 100 percent keeping his eyes closed to the present-day political reality, which is fraught with demoralization.

In his painting entitled Contending for Food II (acrylic and charcoal on paper, 60 cm x 35 cm, 1998), he shows avarice at work. In this painting he satirizes human behavior as he sees it today. Scores of fish move fast towards a heap of God knows what, which they will contend for.

"Just like the fish, many of our political elite are only vying for material gain. They no longer know the limits within which they must keep themselves under control in order not to unrightfully seize what belongs to other people," he noted.

It is a pity, an atmosphere of beastlier and wilder contention in the society is not well manifested in this Contending for Food II.