Turning Points

The Jakarta Post | Fri, 03/28/2008 12:56 PM | Art

I Wayan Karja’s personal and artistic trials have made him the unconventional artist he is today. I Wayan Juniartha reports.

I Wayan Karja sat alone in the waiting room of a Florida hospital. The room was very quiet, but the artist’s mind raced like a downtown intersection during rush hour, with anxiety, anger and confusion reducing him to an emotional wreck.

It was February 2007, and a team of skilled surgeons was carrying out a risky operation onKarja’s oldest child, Putu Sridinari, who was only 12 days short of her 16th birthday. The teen suffered from a rare, life-threatening spinal abnormality, and the Florida hospital was the family’s last resort to find a cure.

“The hospitals in Bali and Thailand concluded that the procedure was too risky. The hospital in South Florida was our only hope. So, there we were, father and daughter, alone in a foreign land,” he recalled recently.

“Those were the most difficult days in my life, having to take my own daughter into a life and death situation.”

During this uncertain and frightening time, Karja found solace in his art. He would sit in the hospital lobby, pouring his heart out onto his canvas.

The painter, who many years before had abandoned lines for colors, suddenly found himself yearning for the simplicity of black and white, the colors of life and death in his Balinese cultural roots.

His anxiety and fear were transformed into layers upon layers of swirling, interconnected lines, a symbolic manifestation of the inevitable cycle of life and death as well as a stark reminder of his daughter’s twisted spinal column.

The nine-hour-long surgery was a success. When they boarded their flight home, there was a smile on Sridiniari’s face and 18 black-and-white paintings and drawings in her father’s suitcase. A final painting about that time of personal turmoil, completed in Bali, is painted in red, the color of a newly born creation.

The paintings, called Untitled 1-19, were among 104 works in Aesthetic and Sublime, Karja’s solo exhibition at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. The exhibition ran from Feb. 28 to March 5.

Untitled 1-19 show that his works are not detached and impersonal interpretations of the world around him. They are visualized, and sometimes romanticized, recollections of various turning points in his life.

Karja’s life was and still is a long narration of difficult choices, personal sorrows and a tireless journey to define his identity amid a constantly changing world. His personal and professional life is a daring attempt to create a balancing act as a citizen of the modern, westernized world and at the same time a loyal custodian of his Balinese heritage and spirituality.

The first difficult choice he made was in 1981 when, against his parents’ wishes, he left the PGA (a school for religious teachers) and enrolled in SMSR, a fine arts college in Denpasar.

“My father was a painter trained in Young Artists’ style,” Karja says of his upbringing in Ubud. “I learned painting when I was still a little boy sitting on his lap and watching him create magnificent images. He taught me everything he knew about painting. When I grew up he wished me to have a stable life that a school like PGA could offer. But I had already falling in love with painting.”

The young man had already mastered Balinese traditional painting techniques and styles as well as the Young Artists’ and the Ubud styles. His years in SMSR introduced him to the works of the world’s great painters; he was particularly enchanted by Monet, Van Gogh and Matisse.
“I felt a strong urge to create paintings that could convey my emotion,” he says.

It would lead to Karja’s eventual break from the conventional esthetics of Balinese paintings. Before he arrived at that important juncture his life, he had to make another important choice.

Upon his graduation from SMSR, Karja was set to leave the island for Yogyakarta’s Indonesian Institute of Arts, the prestigious establishment that had produced many celebrated contemporary painters. But he called off the plan.

“My father was very ill at that time,” he says. “He was confined to his bed for almost two years. I forgot about my dream to go to Yogya and went to the fine arts department at the local Udayana University instead. I chose to stay in Bali to be able to care for my father, support my family and fulfill his obligation to the banjar (traditional neighborhood organization).”

His lecturer at Udayana University introduced Karja to abstract art, further fueling his desire to formulate a new way to present and interpret reality.

The desire reached its climax in 1994 when during a trip to Switzerland, Karja saw a painting by American artist Mark Rothko in a local gallery. Totally dominated by the single color red, it was a simple work of art that somehow managed to outshine everything else in the gallery. For Karja, it was a liberating moment. That single image shattered the last shield of conventionality in his mind.

“Balinese painting is all about narration, about plot and storyline, about clarity of forms and characters. On that day, I saw a painting that didn’t have any of those structured elements but was so magnificently beautiful that it opened my eyes.”

Ever since that day, Karja has striven to create paintings that evoke that exhilarating sense of awe and liberation. He traveled to various cities and universities in the U.S., conducting workshops and exhibiting his works while trying to find a place where he could find the mentor he needed to bring about his art into a new level.

The place was the University of South Florida and the person he was looking for was Prof. Mernet Larsen. The university provided Karja with an academic setting that continuously challenged him to evolve and grow. There he met several influential figures, including Paul Matisse, the grandson of the renowned impressionist painter Karja was so fond of.
Larsen, his most ardent supporter, advised him on releasing his esthetic energy.

“Spend more time with your eyes closed, use colors as the primary element and use your feelings as the primary subject,” he told the Balinese.

It was in the university’s painting studio that Karja perfected his visual language and esthetic symbols. From it came Pengider Buana, Karja’s modern interpretation of the Balinese sacred mandala of the universe.

Finally, the soft-spoken, reticent young painter had discovered his creative mission.
“The central focus of my work for the last few years has been to fuse not only art and spirituality, but East and West … I see my work now as a process of meditation. Both the process and the artwork help me to understand life at a deeper level,” he once said.
By merging contemporary Western techniques and traditional Balinese ideas, Karja hoped to construct a new door, through which a complex, modern individual could find the simple, eternal truth.

The fusion between esthetic aspiration and spiritual longing is clear in his subdued colors, simple brushstrokes, expansive space and subtle forms that speak of a calm heart, a tranquil mind and an artist who has embraced life’s trials and tribulations as nothing but spiritual graces.

“Every time I reflect upon my life, my heart is instantly filled with gratitude and wonder. I am a poor boy from Ubud who has been continuously bestowed with opportunities to meet great people, to travel around the world, to create beautiful things…”