Sadaya Ishigaki to display 'Panorama of Jakarta'

Sadaya Ishigaki to display 'Panorama of Jakarta'

JAKARTA (JP): The dynamic impressionistic paintings of
Japanese painter Sadaya Ishigaki will be shown here in a two-day
exhibition starting Thursday.

The exhibition at the Shangri-La Hotel will feature about 45
paintings of Indonesia done by the artist during his short visits
to this country since September.

Ishigaki was born in Mie Prefecture, Japan, in 1947. In 1970,
he earned his fine arts degree from the Aichi Prefectural
University of Fine Arts. Five years later, he traveled to Europe
and America and then continued to study printmaking at Pratt
Institute, New York.

In 1986, he received the Showa-kai Award. In the same year, he
also received the Prime Minister Award from the Hakujitsu
Exhibition. The following year he had his first solo exhibition
with Galerie Nichido.

He participated in the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland in 1989.
Two years later, Ishigaki had a one-person show at the Stutuia
del Arte, Catania, Italy.

In 1994 he held an exhibition called Ishigaki's New York at
the Forbes Magazine Galleries, New York. The following year a
retrospective of his work was shown at the Kariya City Art Museum
and the Yokkaichi Municipal Museum, Japan.

Recently, he has been visiting Southeast Asia for both
inspiration and a new market. In 1995, his visit to Malaysia
resulted in an exhibition called Ishigaki's Kuala Lumpur. Last
year, he exhibited in Singapore.

This year it is Jakarta's turn to host Ishigaki's show.
However, this time the artist's work is not limited to urban
scenes of the capital. Instead, he has also visited Yogyakarta
and Bali for inspiration.

"All of my paintings on Indonesia are based on my sketches I
made standing on each spot," Ishigaki explained. He started
simple. First of all, he sketched the view of Jakarta from the
hotel room at the Shangri-la Jakarta.

The end result, Panorama of Jakarta, is composed of towering
buildings in the background handled with vertical brush strokes
reaching out to the blue sky above, and low-rise residential
houses in the middleground rendered with horizontal strokes with
a few angled delineations to suggest the slopes of the roofs of
the houses.

"Jakarta has this contrast between the strikingly fast
developing buildings and the promiscuous red tile-roofed old
houses," he commented. Finally in the foreground the luminous
majestic white mosque glows amid the darker tones of the gardens
of the hotel.

Although his hotel room provided him with a great view of the
city, Ishigaki continued to search for more interesting
urbanscapes. One of his favorite places is Kota, Jakarta's old
town.

On his visit to Yogyakarta and surroundings, he became
fascinated with Borobudur, which, according to the artist,
"offers the secret ruins behind which spread out the godlike
mountains and their ridges."

Bali

But Ishigaki was most fascinated with Bali. "Bali is very
popular among young Japanese and I always wanted to visit this
island," he said. "Last year, finally I had the opportunity to go
there, and at once I understood this was an island of the gods,
an island who loves art. Since my first visit to Bali, I have
been back there for another three times. In Bali, with its rice
terraces, groves of coconut and banana trees, the majestic Agung
mountain, tropical wild animals and plants lurking in the depths
of the jungle, and mystical Balinese dances... a painter would
never run short of inspiring subjects. Most of the works which
will be presented at my forthcoming exhibition are painted in
Ubud, Bali."

Certainly, Ishigaki's presence in Bali continues the tradition
of foreign artists, particularly European artists, who have
painted Bali. Having visited the Neka Museum, the Agung Rai
Museum of Art, and other galleries, Ishigaki is aware of this
tradition. Once he even said, "I would love to live on the island
for a while, be settled here and paint, as did European artists
who loved Bali, this island's nature, customs, and gods..."

Fortunately, he has not continued the tradition of the style
of rendition of European artists who painted between 1920 until
Indonesian independence. As he has done in his urbanscapes of
world cities, in his paintings of Bali he has managed to ignore
and even reject conventional perceptions of his subject matter,
and successfully constructed a new perspective, which is a
combination between his own points of view and personal emotions.

Indeed, his paintings of Bali show the energy of the
inspiration that the artist obtained from the island. In Ubud,
for example, he has abandoned the strict vertical and horizontal
brushstrokes he used in his paintings of Jakarta.

"Blown by a gentle breeze, Bali's main color is nature's
green. I want to make bright and simplified paintings, omitting
details, and painting emotions and colors of this country into
many layers of my own colors," Ishigaki stated.

He depicts the scenery of the village, complete with coconut
trees, thatched roofs amid other vegetation, rice fields, and
another distant village along the horizon. However, it is clear
that the painting is not merely a rendition. Stroke by stroke, he
builds his colorful composition, searching for an aesthetic vigor
as well as harmonious balance. Ishigaki's paintings seem to be a
combination between figurative representation and abstract
expression.

Ishigaki's admiration towards Bali has led him to compare the
island to his home country, Japan. He said, "the manners and
nature of Bali resemble Japan's traditional customs. I felt as if
Japanese ancestors had come to Japan from this island by boat a
long long time ago, I felt so peaceful as if I were back in the
Japanese people's native place."

Perhaps that would explain why his Dancer of Bali resembles a
Japanese woman rather than a Balinese one, as many observers have
criticized. Of course it is also possible that the dancer
Ishigaki has painted is in fact Japanese, or of Japanese descent,
as many Japanese recently have come to Bali to stay.

Even though Ishigaki would also love to live in Bali, he won't
stay for long. Rather, he will continue to travel, continuously
searching for the aesthetic of his inner soul through landscapes
of various other countries in the world.