Nothing can stop painter I Nyoman Gunarsa

I Wayan Juniartha, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

Everything has been anything but easy over the last two years for noted Balinese painter I Nyoman Gunarsa.

A recent court case forced him to travel into the dangerous and uncharted territory of the legalities and complexities of copyright.

After filing a police report on several people, including a politically influential Denpasar-based gallery owner, for allegedly producing and distributing fake Gunarsa paintings, the 57-year-old painter faced a legal backlash: a libel lawsuit filed by the gallery owner.

Yet, the most difficult moment for this dynamic founder of the powerful Yogyakarta-based artists group Sanggar Dewata Indonesia was when a paralyzing stroke hit him. Not once, but twice. The first attack took place last year and confined him to a hospital bed for days. His right hand, the one that for decades had been regularly stroking the canvas and giving life to many beautiful paintings, was weakened by the attack and prevented him from working for almost one year.

A year later, when things seemed to be getting better and to some extent Gunarsa had regained control over his right hand, the second attack struck. At that point, many people in Bali's art community believed they might lose him forever.

But Gunarsa is not the kind of man to surrender easily or quietly to life's challenges. He fought back. And did it so well that many people find it difficult to forget his battle of will against his ailment.

"In his almost incomprehensible voice he kept trying to communicate his ideas to people. And he stubbornly and continuously asked for more paper on which he forced that right hand to sketch something, anything, in an apparent attempt to maintain his skill," the owner of Darga Gallery, Jais Hadiana Dargawijaya, recalled when she visited Gunarsa in his hospital bed.

To Gunarsa, the attacks proved to be a defining moment in his life. If anything, the stroke has made him a stronger man, and most probably a new painter.

"I did not end up dead. Obviously, God has another plan for my life. I went through that painful time and came out as a man with a new understanding on the meaning of life, and the relation between the physical body and the transcendental soul of a human being," Gunarsa said.

Eventually, that understanding became a new source of inspiration for Gunarsa, and later led him into a new period in his never-ending quest for artistic exploration.

Gunarsa described that based on the thematic content of the paintings, most of his works from 1960 to 1970 could be categorized as the Academic Period, 1970 to 1980 as the Offerings Period, 1980 to 1990 as the Aringgit (Wayang or puppet) Period, and 1990 to 2000 as the Dance Period.

"I called the new period that was born out of my newly acquired understanding of life the Moksa Period, a period in which I strive to liberate myself from any artistic limits, and to create freely," he said.

In Balinese-Hindu belief, Moksa is the highest state of enlightenment, where the individual soul (Atma) merges with the all-loving, all-forgiving universal soul of Paramatma (the creator). It is said that those who attain Moksa are be able to take their physical bodies with them when they leave this world. It is also said that a person can attain Moksa not only after death but also during his or her day-to-day life here on earth. This attainment is called Jiwa Mukti.

"I comprehend Moksa not as an end but an ever-flowing process through which I artistically exploit any elements, colors and skills I have known before to freely create beautiful representations of this world on canvas," he said.

Some 40 aquarelle paintings of this Moksa Period will be exhibited at the Piazza Gallery in San Francisco's Sausalito area from Oct. 25 to Oct. 31. It will be Gunarsa's fifth solo exhibition in the United States.

The second exhibition was scheduled to take place at New York's Agama Gallery from Nov. 7 to Nov. 14, but the recent tragic event in New York has forced both Gunarsa and the gallery to postpone the exhibition until March 2002.

The works retain many of Gunarsa's earlier symbols and representations, such as elegant Balinese female dancers and a dynamic and brightly colored Barong for instance. But there is less detail and the colors are lighter and brighter. Most of the works also do not possess the symmetrical-composition that was repeatedly exploited by Gunarsa in his Aringgit and Dance Period. The strokes, dots and brush strokes seem to have been executed in a light-hearted, spontaneous and free manner.

"The Moksa Period is the result of an evolution of all my previous works; elements, symbols, colors, experiences merged into a unified source of new creativity. The suffering I endured was the trigger, the source of creativity that gave birth to these works," Gunarsa told.

In short, the works are both new and old at the same time, and in a sense are a definite representation of the 2001 Gunarsa, the artist who found that near-death, hardship and misery blessed his life with the sweet taste of spiritual liberation.