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A Homage Nieuwenkamp

Work In Progress: Kedux Garage, the combination of a traditional Balinese compound with a modern motorcycle garage, reflects its proprietor’s penchant for combining old with new, traditional with modern

I Wayan Juniarta (The Jakarta Post)
Denpasar
Thu, July 28, 2016

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A Homage Nieuwenkamp

Work In Progress: Kedux Garage, the combination of a traditional Balinese compound with a modern motorcycle garage, reflects its proprietor’s penchant for combining old with new, traditional with modern.

A passionate cyclist and a famed motorcycle builder join forces to pay tribute to the first Western artist to visit Bali.

In 1904, Wijnand Otto Jan Nieuwenkamp arrived at Buleleng, a coastal region in northern Bali. Unlike the southern part of the island, which would not completely fall under Dutch colonial rule until 1906, most of northern Bali had been under colonial administration for more than 50 years when Nieuwenkamp gazed at the deep blue ocean and misty hills of Buleleng for the first time.

Gorgeous: Elaborate Balinese floral patterns adorn parts of the bicycle frame while a replica of the relief of a man riding a bicycle on the Meduwe Karang Temple in Buleleng is painted on the head tube.

He fell in love with the island and its people and soon the Amsterdam-born self-taught multi-talented artist — a painter, draftsman, sculptor, lithographer and designer of book covers — found himself wandering near and far along the coastal line and the hilly dirt tracks of remote villages.

Most of these trips, during which his fascination with the island’s art turned him into an avid collector — were carried out on a bicycle, which he brought with him during the sea voyage from Java to Bali.

Little did he know that the sight of him riding a bicycle, an alien contraption for the locals at that time, would be forever etched into the psyche of the Balinese people. The locals in Kubutambahan, a village some 12 kilometers east of Buleleng’s capital Singaraja, decorated a shrine at Meduwe Karang temple with a relief of a man riding a bicycle. The relief later became one of the most iconic images to come out of Bali.

Amid the gloomy post-war atmosphere of 1906, when he made a second visit to the island and witnessed the aftermath of Puputan Badung, the bloody subjugation of the Denpasar royal house by colonial forces, the existence of the relief likely brought a smile onto his weary face. At that time, Nieuwenkamp immortalized Puputan Badung in Ruins of Denpasar, a painting featured in his book Bali and Lombok: Eyewitness Travel.

A century later, the relief would trigger another important bicycle trip. This time, however, it was initiated by a Balinese man, Marlowe Bandem, a young banker whose passion for art can only be matched by his obsession with riding bicycles.

“How could such a secular object — a bicycle — be in such a sacred setting? Was it simply the ingenuity of Balinese artists responding to the strange sight of a man riding his bicycle? Was it a token of appreciation for the intimate relationship between Nieuwenkamp and Bali? Or did Nieuwenkamp deliberately commission such an art piece, foreseeing it would become a unique attraction in the near future?”

Those were the questions that spurred Marlowe to embark in late May on a 200-kilometer bicycle trip from Denpasar to Karangasem in the east and Singaraja in the north. Armed with an infectious smile and a picture of the relief on his cellphone, Marlowe made regular, brief stops every 20 kilometers to chat with locals and ask them about the relief and the Dutch artist it portrays.

Only a few knew about the relief and none of them had any idea as to why some 100 years ago the people of Kubutambahan decided to carve an image of a bicycle-riding westerner onto their temple. Most of the questions that triggered the journey remained unanswered.

Marlowe, however, learned a lot of important things throughout the journey.

“I was struggling on an uphill track at Culik, but Bali is full of surprises. There he was, in front of me, a young man on a wheelchair, dragging himself onwards with a radio on his lap that was so loud, you can’t figure out what was being played. As I passed, I nodded to him, and out of the blue he shouted, ‘Semangat! Keep Going!’ I felt so blessed.”

An optimistic mindset and a jubilant curiosity toward new people and new things were displayed by all the Balinese people he encountered along the journey. This has convinced him that these traits are the universal traits of the Balinese people.

“Those are the traits that created a cultural openness, an atmosphere where people feel that there was nothing wrong with carving a bicycle on a shrine,” he said.

Another lesson crossed his mind when he prayed before that special shrine at Meduwe Karang temple.

“The temple priest explained that the relief we’re seeing today is a result of restoration done years after the 1917 earthquake. It’s such a blessing that Bali has a unique way of preserving a collective memory between past and future — between Bali and Nieuwenkamp,”

“At that instance, the secular carving of Nieuwenkamp on his bicycle became a sacred homage to artistic achievement, peaceful interaction and mutual respect between Bali and the outside world,” Marlowe said.

At that point, he decided to take the bicycle journey to another level, the aesthetic one. He approached Kedux, the proprietor of the famed Kedux Garage in downtown Denpasar and the de-facto leader of NK-13, a youth-driven motorcycle gang.

Since 2007, Kedux has built a reputation as the island’s leading custom motorcycle builder. His unique style and dedication as well as his humble demeanor have won him a cult-like following among the island’s motorcycle enthusiasts as well as numerous accolades at home and abroad.

A self-taught builder, his first motorbike, the Kawasaki Binter Merzy KZ200, had an exhaust with such a terrible noise that it was nicknamed naskleeng, a profane Balinese term, the abbreviation of which was later adopted as the name of his gang. Kedux mostly does custom work on big-displacement motorbikes such as Harley-Davidsons, Triumphs and Hondas.

Several meetings and a couple of whiskey bottles later (both Marlowe and Kedux love drinking more than talking) the deal was done. Marlowe transported his prized possession, a US-made Kagero bicycle frame to Kedux Garage and let the builder do whatever he wanted.

Marlowe volunteered a brief description of Nieuwenkamp and Kedux’s only response was, “Interesting […] so [they] made a relief of him […] I love to have the same thing.”

It is still a work in progress and Kedux predicts that the paint process on the frame will be finished by late August, but both are satisfied with the direction of the collaborative project. A replica of the relief now adorns the frame’s head tube and parts of the frame are richly ornamented with Balinese floral patterns on a luxurious gold background. It will definitely turn into a gorgeous bicycle, one that befits its purpose as a tribute to an artist.

“Once it is completed I will ride it around Bali as our tribute to Nieuwenkamp and our forefathers. They were great people whose warmth and openness toward each other made possible a beneficial cultural interaction. That, I believe, is a very important thing in this increasingly divisive world of ours,” Marlowe said.

— Photos by I Wayan Agus Efryanto

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