Impressions of Indonesia
by Michelle Chin
The paintings of Mario Blanco, Paul Husner and Pupuk Daru Purnomo take us on a
visual feast of a journey through Indonesia, France and the USA. Balinese artist
Mario Blanco depicts the fantasy world to be found in his Campuhan studio; Swiss
painter Paul Husner gives us his impressions of Indonesia; and Javanese artist
Pupuk Daru Purnomo portrays his impressions of Yogyakarta, Solo, Paris and New
York.
While the subject matter of these three artists varies, nevertheless these three
painters have, broadly speaking, something in common. It is the feeling that the
life of the city and the village, the train stations and the temples, the museums
and palaces, the fish markets and street corners, the artist's studio and the
strip-tease joint, can become a vision of a world of ripeness and bloom, projecting
an untroubled sense of wholeness. Their paintings depict a world of joy and light:
one might look at this world with irony, but never with the eye of despair.
Paul Husner, Borobodur |
Their "views" represent one thing at a given moment in time, an effect
of light and colour that is fleeting and momentary: the governing system is the
acuteness of the artist's eye and the sensuous efficiency of his brush-strokes,
knitting their pattern swiftly across the canvas. Their subjects are views and
pleasures which nearly everyone can see and experience in everyday life in and
around the city: the simplicity and sheer beauty of the visible world.
These three artists concern themselves with the endless fields of experiment for
the painters' special problems. Painting the same object or objects over and over
again, their subject is not the view but the act of seeing that view - a process
of mind, unfolding subjectively, never fixed, always becoming. They concern themselves
with the infinite varieties of light effect that can be drawn from a motif at
different times of day, in different weathers, in different lighting. Each recurring
motif - a building, a street scene, an overcast sky, a vase, fish, fruit, flowers,
glass jar, teapot - can be seen as something commonplace and endless, inviting
all of the inspection and discrimination a human eye can bring.
Mario Blanco, Paul Husner and Pupuk Daru Purnomo enjoy the challenges presented
by the way in which light is reflected and broken by various surfaces. They study
the contrasts and harmonies of colours and textures, arranging the subject matter
of their paintings in harmonies of colours and lines. They make us aware of the
play of light on sky and cloud, urban landscapes or the exteriors and interiors
of buildings. In their still life paintings they try to achieve ever-new harmonies
between wine-filled glasses, gleaming china, brilliantly coloured fruit and polished
metals. They make us see the quiet beauty of a simple scene with fresh eyes and
give us an idea of what the artist felt when he watched the light flooding through
the window of his studio, heightening the colour of a piece of fruit or reflecting
on the shiny surface of a table or bench. Of course, these might be objects that
we can see around us every day, but only the artist can open our eyes to the beauty
of these everyday pleasures. The artist allows us to see "eternity in a grain
of sand, and Heaven in a flower."
[foreword for exhibition catalogue, The Impressionists, organbised by Garisart,
Jakarta, 2003