GONG XI FA CAI

welcome to the year of Wooden Horse!

may luck be with us!

LOWSTREAM at JEJU MUSEUM of CONTEMPORARY ART KOREA (2014)

LOWSTREAM is an exhibition that collaborates Indonesian and Korean Artist. Lucky me, I was selected to participate in this exhibition and also got a change to visit Korea. 

i took this picture with my gadget, and this was before the opening night.

Tw(in)side (2013)

Ketut Teja Astawa in conjuction with Mokoh

March 29 - April 29, 2013

Kendra Gallery

This exhibition represents two Balinese painters from different generations who apply similar techniques of Balinese traditional painting as the basis of their creative development. Teja, young painter from Sanur has being developing is own distinctive style, which is underlain by characteristics from the Balinese Wayang Style, since the 1990’s. On the other hand we have the late, lamented Dewa Putu Mokoh who learned the Pengosekan style of painting at a young age; thence he was able to become independent of the mainstream and then developed his own stylistic and distinctive works. There has been no close personal relationship between Teja and Dewa Putu Mokoh. However, the identical creative exploration by both of them, who stand for two different generations, can be perceived as different customs within the contemporary art development of Indonesia. Their existence indicates that the style of traditional Balinese line painting , is alive and well in the development of contemporary art. That is that the development of contemporary art via its esthetic exploration that still reveals the theme line of the ancient classical Balinese Wayang Style. Teja has employed his mastery in transforming caricatural forms as the exploration principle within his works. Actually, puppets are creations with distorted forms and he recreates their basic structures which have been standard. He has restructured them to be more unique, exposing Teja Astawa’s distinctive form of exploration. In short, he has accomplished to domesticate puppets from their collective habitat, into his own personal style and language. Teja’s openness to a variety of interpretations, pretensions and meanings reflects his authenticity to dissimilar matters, even the spontaneous ones. An idea coming to his mind may be compositionally adjusted so that it does not interrupt, or is intentionally meant to be an aesthetic distraction that evokes the viewers attention. The writer believes that it is Teja’s incredible imagination that leads his creativity. When a play, for example, can be sensed philosophically, Teja’s inclination for diverse possibilities may not plainly present the aesthetic phenomena. Furthermore, a value is perceived in the process he is in. The ability to perform continuous explorations is a reflection of an artist’s creative power. Dewa Putu Mokoh, a simple man, was born in 1934 in Pengosekan, Ubud and painted with a distinctive naïve, child like style. He was a brave artist who depicted compositions, uncommon with the Ubud standard, through his small narratives of daily life. All of those experiences can be seen on some of his artworks. Sometimes he just displayed a fabric is hanging on his painting, it might be a common thing but when the writer looked deeply on the detail, it shows the compositional aspect consciousness of Mokoh. The tendency of Balinese traditional art is to depict the paintings narrative spread throughout all parts of the composition and filling the whole of the canvas. However Mokoh exceeded that convention by displaying his uncomplicated narratives using only one focal point, positioned on edge, and then the rest of the composition was left empty. His compositions reveal his intense wish to explore the visual aspects, which he was able to achieve by allowing his creativity to flow intuitively.

artworks from the exhibition tw(in)side

ARTWORKS of Teja Astawa (1)

Teja Astawa (1971) is a Balinese Artist who lives and works in Sanur, Bali. Teja graduated from the Indonesian College of Fine Arts (STSI) in Denpasar in 1990. Astawa works in thematic series that draw his  inspiration from subjects that range from the animals figure, to the wayang stories that nurtured his childhood. His style is characteristically naive with a palette of vivid colours, a childlike manner of rendering figures in flat and simplified stylization, and a delightfully mischievous imagination.

Drawing from episodes, morality tales and characters from Hindu epics and Balinese equivalent of Aesop fables, Astawa brings to these stories that are the staple of Balinese art and image making his personalized interpretations replete with comic touches. Contemporary popular idioms weave through Astawa wayang paintings. Even so, in Astawa treatment of wayang characters there remains a faithfulness to basic wayang iconography that enables identification of the characters. Naivety as a stylistic device in the history of Balinese art is first associated with the Young Artists Style which emerged in the late 1960s in the Penestanan area near Ubud. Astawa naivety is to be distinguished from the latter. Among young contemporary Balinese artists, there are not a few who have developed a kind of naive treatment. Astawa comic oeuvre is by distinction more childlike and innocent, seemingly to enjoy an internal curiosity and humour about the mundane things immediately surrounding him.

FRAGMENTS OF SUBSCONSCIUOS MEMORY

Solo Exhibition by Teja Astawa (2011)

Early in 2011, Teja Astawa had his Solo Exhibition at the Tonyraka Art Gallery in Ubud, Bali. Teja is an artist from Sanur, Bali whose artwork expresses visual uniqueness.  His artwork representation is a development of Wayang stories with the roots of style of Kamasan Painting. Teja Astawa is a hidden potential of a highly creative balinese artist who has created artworks of highly characterized and aesthetic qualities.  Hopefully, Teja’s artwork representation in this exhibition may perhaps offer contribution to contemporary art development.

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