Rasinta puts the lives of Karo people on canvas

By Apriadi Gunawan

MEDAN, North Sumatra (JP): Rasinta Tarigan, a dentist, was busy than usual. He was not preoccupied by dentistry but by fine arts as on May 5, upon the invitation of Mega M, he took part in a week-long joint art exhibition at Thamrin Plaza Medan.

As he was busy preparing the works for the exhibition. I looked at his house and my first impression was that it was the house of an artist, not that of a dentist.

Canvases and paint are carelessly littered in almost every corner of the house. Most of Rasinta's works depict the Karo (North Sumatra's ethnic) culture. A self-made artist, he started with naturalism and later shifted to romantic cubism.

His works show how he expresses the living atmosphere of the Karo people in an uncompromising confusion of lines, seized in a combination of striking and soft colors in angular areas. Born in Kabanjahe on August 30, 1944, Rasinta said he had never made a special plan for the style and model of his paintings. Everything, he said, simply flows out spontaneously.

It may strike us whether a pile of pulled out teeth have affected the way Rasinta thinks, leading him to come up with a painting style or irregular boxes. This, though, is the secret of the mind. There is no bargain when a spiritual and emotional jolt must be transferred onto the canvas. This is a spontaneous outburst, making the artist feel as if he were in another world.

It is this process that Rasinta seems to be going through. He sees with his mind's eye the spirit of an object and then transfers it onto the canvas.

Rasinta has been fond of painting since his childhood. At an early age in life, he devoured comic books by Taguan Harjo, Zam Nuldyn and Arry Darma. Influenced by these comics, little Rasinta would spend hours scrawling on paper and later even made his own comic strips. Those published include Patisumus and Hutan Larangan (Forbidden Forest). His drawing teacher then was M. Kamiel.

As he had a strong urge for painting, he made up his mind to study painting at ASRI Yogyakarta in 1963. Unfortunately, he spent only a brief period there. He returned to Medan and studied dentistry at North Sumatra University (USU), where he is now a professor of dentistry.

Rasinta has a lot of activities in the campus but he has never abandoned painting. He has often exhibited his works at home and abroad. In 1997, he held a solo exhibition in Dients, Ota Herford, Germany, for two months, September and October. It all started with the visit of a German art observer Herr Beern to Rasinta's house.

Impressed by his works, Herr Beer offered him an opportunity to exhibit his works in Germany. Rasinta took the offer and then 43 of his works found their way to Germany for this exhibition. The exhibition was opened by Janina Becker, to the accompaniment of a harp music, Rasinta reminisced.

As a painter starting with naturalism, Rasinta has often transferred, without any polishing, the root of traditional arts and culture, particularly those of Karo. Three of the five works he would like to exhibit at Thamrin Plaza Medan reflect the nuances and perspectives of Karo culture.

Rasinta hopes to be able to manifest in his works, basically, the sacred elements of the traditional culture couched in modernism. He maintains the spirit of the art, as seen in his work called Kampung Karo (Karo Village).

This painting implies the sacredness of a traditional house. As the picture is within a frame made up of triangular areas, Rasinta seems to convey a message that no matter how modern a particular place is, the ancestral values implied in a Karo village must not remain unexposed.

The triangular shapes in the painting itself show that there are three forces in this universe. They are: nature, human beings and God the Creator.

In the days of yore, when a house was built in a Karo village, the entire population had to lend a hand. The villagers then had very strong solidarity, said Rasinta, as if describing the meaning of his Kampung Karo. In the same picture, Rasinta also features two Karo women. The pictures depicts, as a whole, that in the Karo community, it is the women who work in the field, while the husbands usually spend their time playing chess and drinking coffee in food stalls.

It is not usual for Rasinta to put the picture of a tooth into his works. However, in his Kampung Karo painting, a tooth is there. Well, I simply want people to know that the painter is a dentist, he said, adding that the idea struck him after learning that a World Conference of Dentists will be held in Malaysia in the coming September. Rasinta very much want his works be exhibited during the conference.