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.
Curator's Essay:
Wayan Seriyoga parta
Title: Tw(in)side
This show represents two Balinese painters who stand for different generations. They have applied Balinese traditional painting as the basis of developing their work and therefore they have a similar technique in their exploration. Teja is a young painter from Sanur who has developed his work, underlain by the Balinese Wayang character, since 1990. He has succeeded in creating his own distinctive style. 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 break away and developed his own distinct character of painting. A creative exploration of the similarities between the two men who represent two different generations can be interpreted as a different style to the development of contemporary art in Indonesia. Their presence has marked thread of Balinese painting styles in the development of contemporary art. Namely the development of painting that explores the contemporary aesthetic exploration, yet still showing a thread of earlier Balinese paintings. In other words, the presence of their works marked the development of painting in contemporary Balinese who have an identity. “animal instinct”: a Distinctive Expressional Language of Ketut Teja Astawa The word “animal” represents the theme in Teja’s works in this show, bringing up the stories of animals, while “instinct” refers to the traits of animals that are more instinctive. The instinct is the nature of all living creatures. It is also the basic human feature that comes from the desire and is a subconscious drive, and therefore it is spontaneous. The term is used to facilitate Teja’s exploration that is full of spontaneity in playing with the puppet structure in terms of visuals and narratives. Far from being merely playful with the structure, Teja has restructured the forms taken from the puppets and their narrative structure. This spontaneity is the foundation for the existence of his peculiar objects and at the same time, they signify uniqueness in his works. Teja’s creative performance in the work is very interesting to note, because the ideas in his works are not fully designed before they are applied onto canvas. It means that he does not work with a fixed design as the ideas are continuously progressing along with the work processes. Varied spontaneous concepts materialize into these processes and he reveals them directly in his works. So, this is Teja’s creative mechanism at work. Observing this mechanism, the writer thinks that Teja’s creative performance is of psychological impulses or explosions emerging from his subconscious perception. In other words, Teja exhibits the fragments of his subconscious experiences that frequently arise during his work.i As the subconscious experiences, the fragments of stories in Teja’s works appear to be piled up and overlayed one another. Visually, the narratives are seen in his works but they are not structured in strands of causation. The narrative that takes place is through a structured composition. If scanned those object layers expose different time and space dimensions. The narratives are sometimes the fragments of a broken story, united in the canvas, because the narrative in his work is also multi-layered. Then the question arises, what inspires Teja to such exploration? During the discussion of Teja’s figure and creativity for his solo show introduction in 2010, the writer attempted to explore and recognize the background from which the works were created to process the visual language of puppets taken from his childhood memories. Subsequently, it was found out that his strong interest in puppets were of impulses of cultural memory settling in his subconscious perception and had given rise to the imaginative room of his creative life as an artist in the future. That review was purely about the explanation of causal objects in his works. In this exhibition program the writer identified a specific issue that is about the exploration of building structures in Teja’s puppets from the conventional language then returned with a way to revamp the structure and also the structure of the narrative. Moreover, based on several intense discussions about his creative process, Teja said that in addition to childhood memory, there was the adolescent experience at Junior High School that of his deep interest in caricature. According to him, caricature was a medium giving him new creative room for varied visual ideas that are loaded with contextual values. It provided openness in exploring and restructuring forms. He played it as a humorous parody to make him laugh; sometimes it was tragic, ironic, but filled with human values. As a medium, caricature had functioned such “new-found color” in Teja’s creativity phase to express a variety of things he felt and experienced as a high school student. In caricature, he discovered the spirit of playing with visual object structure. Until finally he decided to enter the institution of art and this facilitated within him more space to understand the medium and fine art media. In this institutions Teja began incubating various experiences of the past, where the memory of puppets interacted with new experiences of the art medium of painting which he intensively studied. From the academic bench he began to draw past experience into his creative world more intensely and methodically. Teja employed his mastery in transforming caricatural forms as the explorative principle in his works. Actually, puppets are creations with distorted forms and he recreates their basic structures that have become a standard. He restructured and processed them to be more unique, exposing Teja Astawa’s distinctive form of exploration. In short, he accomplished to domesticate puppets from their collective habitat into his own personal style and language. With such personal language, he can freely develop a variety of themes such as with this exhibition and the theme of animals. Stories about animals exist in a variety of folklore in different civilizations in the world, which has similarities and differences in accordance with the local cultural. In the Hindu tradition in Bali, fables are known as Tantri, derived from Panca Tantra and Jataka of India. Tantri was taken from the name of a beautiful girl who was a very good storyteller. It was about the girl whose stories managed to influence a tyrannous king’s temperament into becoming wise. The story she told him were of animals, which are the metaphors for human behavior, packed with imagination and rich with moral messages that can arouse consciousness. The development of Teja’s works utilizing fabel or tantri themes are indirectly influenced by Dewa Putu Mokoh and some of his predecessing artists from Sanur, i.e. I Gusti Made Rundu, Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai, I Soekarja, I Poegoeg, I Rudin, Ida Bagus Soenia Several aspects of Tantri were adopted as the guidance in Teja’s series of works, that explore the stories of animals. However, these stories later developed independently are not bound by the referenced epic. The narratives in the works were not intended to carry around the contextual values of the epic in the Tantri or common folklores, however Teja was creating new stories by adopting the animals’ deeds as metaphors. These stories are subjective narratives that are composed with distinctive visual expression; slightly humorous, seemingly light, and the simple caricature characters he is fond of. The power of imagination and spontaneity has led Teja’s exploration to not simply stick to the existing patterns. Imagination and spontaneity drive the exploration of work that never stops just following the patterns that already exist. Teja’s openness to a variety of interpretation pretensions and meanings reflects his openess to things that are spontaneous. An idea coming to his mind may be compositionally adjusted so it does not interfere or deliberately intended to arouse the attention of the aesthetic nuisance. The writer believes that it is Teja’s potent imagination that leads his creativity. His inclination to play with the standard objects can be identified as limitless creative power that will always reign over the aesthetic impasse. Teja always looks for the gaps of dissimilar phenomena in the visual culture of contemporary media like in the interactive toy of Angry Birds that has recently been fancied by the tablet users. Spontaneously, the figures of angry birds and the pigs, the enemies, invade his canvas along with his animal creations inspired by the forms of puppet animals in the Tantri. It seems to be easy for Teja to make parallel these two different characters; from the past and recent time, without anxiety if their images collide and spoil the existence of puppet characters he has created. Nonetheless, this is not a new issue with Teja who loves searching for possibilities. In early 2000, he had once worked on the theme of super heroes of children animations shown on televisions. He recreated Batman’s character in such a way and depicted a particular narrative in accordance to the theme. The new possibilities are supposed to exist but they should be conditioned in this fashion to avoid distortions. When a play can be sensed philosophically so to should Teja’s inclination for diverse possibilities not plainly present aesthetic phenomena. Furthermore, a value is perceived in the process he is in. The ability to conduct ongoing exploration is a reflection of an artist’s creative power, but it should be coupled with efforts to understand the way of creative life. It motivation behind this power. In the opinion of the author these aspects already exist within Teja, who met with the cultural experiences that are blended with restructuring power as well as enriched with spontaneity and openness to new phenomena are the potential power to deliver to his creativity journey. Teja is on the track he designs; a track that gives him diverse possibilities and these potentials are taking him to other unique discoveries. This animal series of works are ones of the visual possibilities coming out from his creativity. Understanding Teja is understanding his ability in driving himself to keep digging out possibilities that frequently come to light spontaneously from such a wild imagination. Interpreting “the simplicity” of Dewa Putu Mokoh Meanwhile, a previously similar thing has been done by Dewa Putu Mokoh with Balinese traditional narrative painting, particularly Ubud style, which revolves around the epic Mahabharata and Ramayana narratives, and then a brief narration about the daily life of the community he lived in. He developed a distinctive visual language that became his trademark, with a simple human figurative shape. He states “a complicated painting can hide its shortcomings in its complicated nature, however a simple painting is going to clearly show its shortcomings”.ii Mokoh was a simple man, born in 1934 in Pengosekan Ubud and painted with a naïve child like style. In some of his work he was considered very daring in showing uncomon compositions from the Ubud standard, with small narratives taken from their daily lives. Sometimes he displayed a fabric hanging in his composition, it might be a common thing but when the writer looked deeply into its detail, it showed the awareness of Mokoh’s compositional aspects. Generally there is a tendency of the traditional artworks to contain full compositions, with the purpose for displaying a complete narration in one plane of work. But Mokoh exceeded that convention by displaying the uncomplicated object, positioned on edge and the other part of the canvas is left with empty. Its composition shows his intensity in exploring the visual aspects. He was able to achieve this through his intuitive creative flow. ii Teja has sharpened his esthetic sensitivity and conceptual strength through formal art education, to bring about the awareness to raise the potential that exists in the fine art tradition that he inherited through his Balinese culture. On the contary, Mokoh’s fully honed intuition, artistic sensitivity and self-directed learning that was originally studied via his uncle Gusti Ketut Kobot’s Pengosekan style of painting. He learned techniques that form the basis for developing a more stylish way of personal expression. He did not want to stop just repeating the inherited collective style, with creativity he could prove that he is able to bring an innovative form of language to the collective realm. A form of language that still has relevance to the traditional language, which is then developed by bringing up the contextual value based on an innovative touch and his personal identity. A valuable related experience is the lasting achievement by the painter Rudolf Bonnet who participated in establishing the association the Pita Maha in 1950. Bonnet cautioned his student, “do not make paintings like your teacher, if they are the same as your teacher, that’s not to be true. They are not a product or a characteristic of you. “ Bonnet’s great achievement was to impart these words and hence allow for the natural development of the different styles of painting in Pengosekan, and allowed for the nurturing of one of the great artists that has an important position in contemporary art development of Bali. Epilog At this time a stagnant and a static culture is supposed to be a demotivating factor for reaching a continuous progression of the modern spirit. However, in reality many tradition cultures are always experiencing the dynamic and the evolutionry, because of the social aspects that effect the supporting community. Balinese culture has long been a tradition said to have strong roots and continues to grow along with the times. Since having contact with Western culture at the beginning of the 20th century, and especially in the Southern Bali, in its development period of the construction of the consciousness of noble values of the Balinese cultural identity within the initial framework of cultural tourism. Nor when modernity increasingly tightinfluencing the development of tourism in Bali, therefore the traditional cultural culture has faced diversification. For example the gap between religious interests and the interests of the tourism industry, the separation is certainly not going to be in harmony with the dynamics that eventually gave birth to the convention. Tradition and modernity has become two significant entities in the survival and the development of culture in Bali. A more real condition can be seen in the development of the arts, especially fine art. A visual phenomenon has been demonstrated by the two artists in this exhibition, modernization has enormous impact in shaping attitudes and perceptions to make sense of tradition, self perception, and modernity. Appreciating their work opens the widest spaces of personal imagination, freeing it from the various interpretations according to the personal perceptions and experiences. For them, an artist is not the one who holds the full authority upon the meaning of their works but it is the appreciators who possess their own subjective authority in building a meaning from their perception toward the visual phenomena. imagination of the perceivers. Therefore, the task of an artist is to produce a unique aesthetic phenomenon so that they may attract the attention of appreciators. So that is not a problem if the art works were to be solely enjoyed only on the esthetic phenomenon within the unique objects that are presented
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