Widodo's style goes against the current trends

Widodo's style goes against the current trends

By Carla Bianpoen

JAKARTA (JP): If it is true that works of art are a reflection of living issues, values and conditions in society, then the paintings of a young painter from Central Java may indicate an emerging desire to retreat from the buzz of modern life.

Entitled Getar dan Rasa Estetika Widodo, gesture and aesthetic feeling of Widodo, the solo exhibition is sponsored by the Merpati Gallery in Yogyakarta. The exhibit runs from Feb. 4 through Feb. 10 at Balai Budaya, Jl. Gereja Theresia 47, Central Jakarta.

Over 30 paintings reveal the artistic explorations of an artist who discloses that only fairly recently did "his hand obey the wishes of his artistic feelings". Widodo says he was drawn to painting before he even went to school. Relatives of the painter say the young Widodo could never see a bare door or tile without jotting down some drawings. Even the bare floor was not safe from the boy's artistic impulses. Yet it took him almost 10 years of formal training and an unbelievable endurance to arrive at his present level of painting.

Maybe his love for old cars had somehow diverted his artistic creativity. Maybe it was simply a matter of maturity. Widodo says his return to Blitar and the peace of its environment set his creativity in motion. Whatever it was, today Widodo is an artist who has ventured to the capital city. He uses a style which goes against the current trends. While many artists today try to keep in line with global trends in the arts, Widodo seems to retreat to his 'backyard', valuing his own instincts and feelings. Not that he completely abandons exploration, for there is a distinct effort to satisfy popular tastes. But he is not very successful in this. The dancers of his paintings are boring, and so are his realistic rendering of panoramas. They do not speak or fascinate, or even puzzle the viewer. They just belong to a passive reporting of the eye's experience.

In contrast, renditions of objects or situations touching the core of his heart contain an inner, fascinating vitality. Regretfully, this does not come out very well in the setting of the paintings in the exhibit. No effort seems to have been made to make the exhibition more attractive, neither are innovations visible to move away from the routine. Certainly, an area such as this does not offer much choice, but with some professional skill a better spatial arrangement could have been achieved and the strength of certain paintings, which deserve our attention, could have been brought forward.

In addition, several frames had a disruptive effect on the paintings, and while frames should not be dominant, they should help boost the strong points of the art work. Many of the paintings on display would have been better off with no frame at all.

Cosmic emotion

Widodo's forte indeed lies not in what he sees, but in expressing the effect of his subject matter on his feelings. Piercing the veil of visible appearances, Widodo's abstractions of orchids, sunflowers, cockfighting, horses and above all of an erupting volcano are manifestations of human and cosmic emotion.

Merapi Meletus (Mount Merapi Erupts) draws the spectator into the tempestuous atmosphere of a dramatic happening, the eruption of Mount Merapi. Blasting brush strokes in unusual color combinations blot out any boundaries, provoking an unbounded imagination of the viewer. Widodo uses big brushes and thick paper formed to a big palette to bring address to his creative art urges that come pouring out, Dwi Marianto said in his introduction to the exhibition. Widodo was in Yogyakarta at the time of the Merapi eruption, but he did not actually see it. The painting is a product of his imagination and his fine senses. The painter appears to be endowed with visionary senses. Two days before the actual eruption, the painter had started this work. "It was unusually hot", he reveals, "and I had a premonition of the eruption."

Looking at his paintings, one would think Widodo must have been deeply impressed by the rush of a water fall, by seething waves, or by roaring breakwater. It is as tangible in the brush strokes in the cockfight painting, as it is in the paintings depicting horses. Even the many abstractions of flowers are marked by rotating movements of the brush. But Widodo explains that the revolving motions may refer to the days when he was a little boy sitting in awe before the turning masks of the reog (traditional Sundanese theater).

Widodo went to art school in Yogyakarta, and lives there today. He explains, however, that he draws his inspiration from sources in the environment in East Java, in his hometown Blitar where he was born into a teachers family in 1965 and at the foot of Mt. Kawi where he grew up among the farmers.