S

unaryo Soetono, or Sunaryo for short, is known as an artist who commands painting on canvas as well as sculpture, installation, graphic art, craft and much, much more.

Imbued with an inner sanctum that drives on a balance between the here and there, between worldly realities, cultural heritage and the mystique of the eternal, his works emanate an authentic and often fascinating aesthetic.

Even when rampant violence and the rapes of May 1998 plunged him into a state of deep anguish, Sunaryo’s works were imbued with that inborn creativity and aesthetic that took everyone by surprise, not least himself.

At that time, he was preparing for the opening exhibition of the newly built Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, and his sculptures lay ready to be displayed. In his despair, he covered the works with black cloth to reveal his mood of profound mourning.

He said he was unable to swallow any food at that time, he felt restless and anxious, had diarrhea and lost weight. But it was for him a turning point, he revealed. As he tightened the ropes around the covered works, the sound of the tightening ropes evoked new inspiration. The covered sculptures acquired a new meaning and became an example of how Sunaryo’s works can be gripping and beautiful at the same time.

As he named the show “Titik Nadir”, the Lowest Point, it actually became a turning point in his practice.

“Before that, I just followed the flow of my feelings, but after that lowest point, I became more thoughtful and contemplative, seeking to know who I am and my position in the universe,” he said.

The twenty works titled “Seamless Points – One Vision, Many Perspectives” on show at the Ciptadana Building starting Friday are just a few examples of such profound contemplations — on the environment, technology, humanity and the transcendental.

Sunaryo’s closeness to nature is evident in the beautiful green painting titled How Green Is My Golf Course. But there is an undeniably sad undertone as the artist thinks of the evictions and land disputes that forgo the building of a golf course, leaving little or no bargaining power for the little man.

As golf courses give opportunities and pleasure to the well-to-do, in contrast others have to shuffle to find a place to shelter their family. Shelter in the City Shadow is about such an issue, the colors of the painting revealing the bleakness of the situation. The black and orange against which the shades of grey, brown and black of the shelters stand out may denote the vulnerability of the shacks that often fall prey to fires in the city.

The environment is clearly an issue of great concern.

“I worry about what is happening to the city. I like everything green and clean,” he said in an interview in his well-designed studio that stands amid a paradisiacal wealth of plants and trees.

Environmental degradation is something that saddens Sunaryo deeply. Not only in the city, but elsewhere too. Polluted estuaries endanger the lives of thousands of species of birds, mammals, fish and other wildlife.

Dedicating three paintings to the estuary, his concerns are expressed in colors, from The White Estuary, which appears like a symphony in white, to Karamba on the Estuary where encroaching pollution is displayed by the yellowy-brown and black colors, Plastic Estuary, in which total pollution is indicated using resin waste from the artworks of his son, Arin.

At age 69, Sunaryo (b. 1943) is still actively involved in the arts in Indonesia. A role model for many young artists, he follows advancements in technology with great interest while including technology in his extensive art practice.

His painting Surfing in the Jungle was inspired by the rise of Internet Explorer, one of the first in a series of graphic web browsers later followed by Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome, all serving to give access to millions of users around the globe.

In a similar reference to technological changes, Sunaryo’s painting features contemporary storage in The Stored World showing a host of print media cuts above which a large black cloud hovers. Within this cloud a real, small red flash disk is ingeniously tucked in.

But for all his concerns and engagements with worldly matters, Sunaryo excels most with his spiritually infused works. While the spiritual and the philosophical have always been an important mood in his art, this came full circle only in his six-week residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI) in 2007.

Sunaryo explains it was for him a period that he had never experienced before. Secluded and relieved of all problems and issues of the real world, he felt an extreme spur, with classical music evoking the issues and thoughts that had been haunting him but had not been allowed to come to fruition as commitments managing Selasar Sunaryo Art Space and several other projects had taken up most of his time.

Among the 45 works he managed to make in just six weeks at STPI are those featuring the thumb, which he regards as a metaphor for his being, his personal identity. If the thumb or finger is hurt, the entire body feels pain, he said. One of the works of that time, The Wound Upon Your Finger, Anguish in my Heart (2008), is included in this show.

At one time, abhorred by violence and pointless killing, Sunaryo became so depressed he was unable to create any art. When a human life did not seem to count, he wondered what the point was in making art. But soon he found enlightenment, and paintings came to feature the sublime, marking more than ever the relation to his creator. This is evident in Thou Circle and Space and I’m Whirling Within You, the first using marble powder, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, the latter applying marble powder and gold leaf to make the circling lines.

“Lines for me are like a force that always give drive and stimulation to consciousness: Lines that repeat, strong and dynamic,” he once stated.

The show also features a few sculptures, among them The Bull, the artist’s zodiac symbol.

Sunaryo studied sculpture at the Bandung Institute of Technology, where he graduated in 1969; he learned the technique of marble sculpture in Italy in 1975.

He had been a pioneering member of the Decenta group which championed abstract art,  then went on to make paintings, sculptures and installations inspired by personal, cultural and social and political life until the present day.

An artist of note in the Indonesian art scene throughout four decades, he prefers to be called a pelaku seni, denoting his preoccupation with art and craft since he was a boy.

Sunaryo’s show is being held as part of the art program of Ciptadana Capital. Surely the works by Sunaryo are able to aptly inspire the balance that makes every undertaking meaningful.

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