Tiga Rupa expo promotes leading young artists

By Amir Sidharta

LEGIAN, Bali (JP): Unlike the typical "hotel art exhibition" you can see in Jakarta, often featuring idyllic images that can easily be appreciated by most hotel guests, the Tiga Rupa art exhibition at the Hotel Padma here features art works that ask for a little more attention.

The exhibition presents works by three leading young Indonesian artists: Ivan Sagito, Made Djirna, and Sutjipto Adi. They are contemporaries, and all were born in 1957.

In the show, we can see Ivan Sagito's signature rendition of everyday scenes in a style reminiscent of the Surrealism. His Tidur Panjang (Deep Sleep) shows numerous figures dressed in traditional Javanese garb lying down in various positions. Many are depicted floating above the arid landscape, giving a dream- like impression to the scene.

Malang-born Ivan Sagito got a boost to his career in 1987, when he received an award in the Seventh Jakarta Biennial. Then in 1988, he had a solo exhibition of his works at the Duta Fine Art Gallery, and again won the Eighth Jakarta Biennial in 1989. His works were also exhibited at the 1991 Indonesian Festival in the U.S.. He became known for his surrealistic renderings of common Javanese women in bizarre landscapes.

Teriakan Kekelaman (The Cry of Darkness) is another of Ivan's works. It shows female figures seated with their hands over their heads. Their long hair covers their heads. The hair of one seated woman forms the head of another woman. This standing woman has her hands together in front of her face. Another young woman is shown in a similar stance.

She clasps her hands in front of her open mouth, as if to amplify her screams. But her cry seems weak and helpless.

Although Ivan's message is not obvious, a feeling of futility can be sensed in his paintings. In Teriakan, the woman's cry is portrayed as being very weak. The painter seems to be saying that the woman is so helpless she cannot even scream.

The painting has relevance to the political and economic crisis we face today, and many viewers can sympathize with the young woman. Like her, we feel we do not even have the energy to voice our frustrations.

While Ivan Sagito's subject is almost always Javanese women, Sutjipto Adi combines many images into his works. A collage of personal images, photos from newspapers and anatomical figures usually seen in science fiction all make up Adi's paintings.

Adi was born in Kalisat, Jember. Like Sagito, he also participated in the 1987 Jakarta Biennial. His early paintings consisted of visual explorations of anatomy, presented in an environment reminiscent of science fiction illustrations. In the past, his works were visual expressions of his exploration of his own personal life.

Between 1994 and 1995, the painter started to explore social issues in his works. His work presented in the 1997 Tokyo exhibition, The Mutation: Painstaking Realism in Indonesian Contemporary Painting, indicated this marked shift in style.

In Dream for Children I, an image of Mother Theresa, taken from a newspaper, carries a crying boy, rendered realistically, in her hands. In the upper left corner of the canvas, a row of boys are presented in perspective. Toward the right a crane flies above a young mother.

The painting clearly addresses the issue of children that the world is facing today. Adi here combines his earlier imagery into this new style. Whereas his earlier works are filled with a visual interplay of images and planes, here he leaves a lot of empty space. The end result is a much more soothing scene, with a lot of room for the viewer's eyes to wander around and discover other images in the painting.

It is interesting to note that he leaves images that he takes from newspapers and the media as they appear in print. He transfers the images onto the canvas using a silkscreen technique. Adi also uses pencil to draw on the canvas. "I just recently realized that even my painting technique is based on my cross hatching drawing technique," he said.

In Dream of Love he presents a realistic painting of a young boy, modeled by his son, and an eagle, and an image of an Australian Aborigine named Costello, taken from a newspaper image. A row of bars separate Costello and the boy. On the right of the canvas, a crucifix, viewed from behind, towers over a group of kangaroos.

"The eagle is Costello's spirit to be free," says the artist. Costello wishes to be free, while he in fact remains imprisoned within the constraints of the political powers that control his own land. The inclusion of the crucifix symbolizes the artist's search for an answer as to why God seems to have turned his back on the problems of Aborigines for so long.

The third artist of the group, I Made Djirna, has a style of painting that is distinct from his two colleagues. Whereas the style of Sagito and Adi are based on realism, Djirna's work completely frees himself from painting any representational imagery.

In Wajah-wajah '98 (Faces '98) he presents numerous figures, rendered in a spontaneous manner and arranged in a coherent array of colors. The rich imagery is complemented by a strong intuitive sense of compositional balance, which makes the painting interesting and attractive.

Sejoli (Amorous Couple) is from the artist's latest series of works.

In this painting, his figures are more recognizable, but are still distorted in his famous manner.

Although held in a hotel, the Tiga Rupa art exhibition is by no means intended for those who expect to see only pleasing, idyllic images. It may be advisable for viewers to spend a little more time than usual with the works of Ivan Sagito, Sutjipto Adi, and Made Djirna to be able to fully appreciate their works.

The Tiga Rupa exhibition will be on show at the Hotel Padma, Legian, Bali until Jan. 26, 1999.