Nyoman brings shine to Balinese sculpture
Nyoman brings shine to Balinese sculpture
By Jean Couteau
JAKARTA (JP): No Indonesian sculptor commands as much public
attention as the 44-year-old, Balinese born, Bandung-based Nyoman
Nuarta. When still a student, he won in 1977 the commission for
the Proclamation Monument in Jakarta. As late as last October, he
saw his proposal for the corner sculptures at the National
Monument coming in first place. He is also known for numerous
state and private works as well as for his Garuda Wisnu Kencana
project, a huge statue-cum-park to be built in the south of Bali,
the construction of which will begin this December.
Many would boast of these achievements. To Nyoman Nuarta,
"they are just the means that allow me to finance my personal
creations" as he puts it meekly. To show he means it, he is
exhibiting his latest personal works between Nov. 28 and Dec. 7
at the Wisma Seni National exhibition hall in Gambir, Central
Jakarta.
Behind the artist's public, and sometimes controversial, image
what does this exhibition tell us about the man's artistic
creativity, and furthermore, about the state of Indonesian
sculpture?
Born in Bali, where everyone from childhood is involved in the
making of meaningful religious symbols, Nyoman Nuarta displays no
inclination towards abstraction. "A work of art," he says, has to
be understandable to common people. "No highbrow, elitist avant-
gardism, but instead communion with the public through art works.
That is exactly what exists already -- and this is no accident --
in his society of origin, Bali. Nuarta operates within a logic of
continuity. What he aims at is not to transform the esthetics of
his society, after the "modernist art" fashion born in Europe,
but only to adapt it to the needs of the modern world with the
use of new techniques and a renewed message.
Nyoman Nuarta demonstrates this progressive, albeit well-
rooted, creative spirit in his treatment of the form. Not only
does he display in his works, through his Balinese heritage, a
great familiarity with the world of man and nature, but he
sharpens it with an analytical knowledge gained during his years
at the Art Department of the Bandung Institute of Technology.
Thus, when he asserts himself as a figurative artist, this is no
mere boast. He means it. He knows all the rules of naturalist
representation, as in some of his works of human characters like
La Madame. And this is this "seriousness" in his working of the
naturalist form which gives him the liberty to modify it when
needed for symbolic purposes.
Nuarta's predilection for figuration doesn't strike one as
conventional, though. It is wrapped -- almost literally, at least
in his main works -- in the most stunning, innovative techniques,
and in particular his method of transparency in his materials. By
this technique ploy, he completely transforms the volume and
surface aspects of his works: the mass is holed out, and the
surface, having lost the "descriptive" quality normally
associated with realist figuration, becomes evocative of the
"untold", of a "something" which is beyond the world of mere
representation. Realism, in this context, takes on a new meaning.
Many of the characters shown in this exhibition -- even though
naturalistic on the outside -- give the impression of blending in
the ethereal, in the non-being. Nuarta's technique, to that
extent, can be construed as a vehicle of his meditative, Hindu-
rooted mind-frame.
And this is indeed in his symbolic works, rather than in his
more outwardly realistic ones, here represented mainly by
sculptures of the animal world, that Nyoman Nuarta reveals
himself at his best. Sin (Dosa), for example, perhaps the
masterpiece of this exhibition, displays a woman literally
"netted" in mesh wire, with her hollowed, spread out body making
one piece with the mesh-iron which is shrouding her. The
recurrence in this work and others of "grids", "barriers" and
"nets" may be seen as variations on the theme of the helplessness
of man, thus ringing an almost existentialistic philosophical
note, which is a surprise coming from such an extrovert and
optimistic character as Nuarta. In other works, such as Rush
Hour, the same mood applies to the theme of modern life, looking
here like an endless quest; the cyclist in the wind seems to rush
nowhere.
Arguably Nyoman Nuarta's most regular and strongest
philosophical inspiration originates from his Hindu past: Sapta
Sukma, Metamorphosis, Typhoon Dance, Transfiguration and Menapak
Sukma, all refer directly or indirectly to the theme of cosmic
transience, a favorite of Hindu thought. Interestingly though,
few Balinese would recognize the mark of their heritage in
Nuarta's treatment of this theme. His is no traditionalist theme.
Although the spirit of his themes is rooted in the culture of his
origin, he never expresses it in an ethnic manner, the
understanding of which would be limited to the Balinese for
iconographic reasons. On the contrary, he wraps it in such a way
that it addresses everyone, Hindus and non-Hindus, Balinese and
non-Balinese alike. In doing so he creates a symbolism which is
distinctly his, while having at the same time a universal, human
and "religious" dimension. And he has no qualms about it. He does
not see the symbolism of Balinese culture as consisting of a
ready-made corpus of ethnic images inherited from the past -- as
many Westerners would like to have it -- but rather as a core of
universal ideas and beliefs of which the forms of representation
have to be constantly reinvented. In this context the fact that
his works are not contemporary in the Western sense is not
relevant. They are authentic.
What Nyoman Nuarta demonstrates in this exhibition is that
Indonesian artists can be actors of the global art debate without
having to ape the mood and works of their Western counterparts.
Art works, after all, even and principally in our modern,
borderless societies, can retain a universal appeal only if they
are all anchored in the society which has given birth to them.