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.