I Nyoman Kenyem featured in local newspapers in Bali, Indonesia
Artist I Nyoman Kenyem returns with nature’s theme yet again in his solo exhibition “The Bridges of Nature” at D’peak Art Space Singapore, 7th-31st Oct 2009. Kenyem is still, loyally, exploring the images of flower, leaf and bamboo in a dynamic and repetitive design.
Bamboo, leaves, flowers may dominate Kenyem’s canvases, and become a kind of pattern in a decorative recurring design. However since the pattern is recurred in a non-static design, Kenyem’s canvases do not become decorative designs, and are still dynamical movement as seen in his exhibition at fantastic art gallery in Surabaya.
To Kenyem, becoming a modern of contemporary artist in Indonesia means entering western fine art tradition. But it does not necessarily mean westernization and he has extracted the important essence from the long history of western fine arts – freedom. This means free to become western or not to become western.
Eddy Soetriyono, fine art curator, has stated that modern art outside of Europe-United States faces one modern fine arts world with a single value system. From the statement above, Kenyem expressively rejects it.
It is because besides adopting the Western tradition. Kenyem as a Balinese, since he was a child, has been instilled with the Balinese visual arts that tends to be decorative with bright colors and that is inseparable from daily life activities in the form of various ritual ceremonies - a tradition that continues to live until today.
“Hence, with the creative freedom that I have drawn from the Western culture, I am still a Balinese and Indonesian man, but also a world citizen on this single earth. Therefore, I need international interactions. I don’t want to be given borders. I want to become a whole man, who continues to flow as nature teaches fairness”
Kenyem, whose first solo exhibition in Gauri Naicita Scockholm Sweden (1996), has seen how modern people are trapped by definitions, limitations, and sectioning, and if this continues they are likely to lose relation, become isolated, become arrogant, and face dead-end without alternatives. Kenyem surely don’t want to end up in such dead-end.
Living in Ubud, an “international village” with prominent Balinese cultural arts, Kenyem is very close with mountain life: outspread hills with terraced farms in green color gradually changing into gold, various big trees with luxuriant leaves, bamboo forests, flower forests, all having been instilled within himself together with the daily ritual ceremonies, which have become customs in the life of the Balinese.
“The nature and its relations is at one in him, as with the daily ritual ceremonies, which have become customs in the life of the Balinese” said Eddy, who is also the chief editor of C-Arts magazine.
Bamboo, leaves, flowers may dominate Kenyem’s canvases, and become a kind of pattern in a decorative recurring design. However since the pattern is recurred in a non-static design, Kenyem’s canvases do not become decorative designs, and are still dynamical movement as seen in his exhibition at fantastic art gallery in Surabaya.
To Kenyem, becoming a modern of contemporary artist in Indonesia means entering western fine art tradition. But it does not necessarily mean westernization and he has extracted the important essence from the long history of western fine arts – freedom. This means free to become western or not to become western.
Eddy Soetriyono, fine art curator, has stated that modern art outside of Europe-United States faces one modern fine arts world with a single value system. From the statement above, Kenyem expressively rejects it.
It is because besides adopting the Western tradition. Kenyem as a Balinese, since he was a child, has been instilled with the Balinese visual arts that tends to be decorative with bright colors and that is inseparable from daily life activities in the form of various ritual ceremonies - a tradition that continues to live until today.
“Hence, with the creative freedom that I have drawn from the Western culture, I am still a Balinese and Indonesian man, but also a world citizen on this single earth. Therefore, I need international interactions. I don’t want to be given borders. I want to become a whole man, who continues to flow as nature teaches fairness”
Kenyem, whose first solo exhibition in Gauri Naicita Scockholm Sweden (1996), has seen how modern people are trapped by definitions, limitations, and sectioning, and if this continues they are likely to lose relation, become isolated, become arrogant, and face dead-end without alternatives. Kenyem surely don’t want to end up in such dead-end.
Living in Ubud, an “international village” with prominent Balinese cultural arts, Kenyem is very close with mountain life: outspread hills with terraced farms in green color gradually changing into gold, various big trees with luxuriant leaves, bamboo forests, flower forests, all having been instilled within himself together with the daily ritual ceremonies, which have become customs in the life of the Balinese.
“The nature and its relations is at one in him, as with the daily ritual ceremonies, which have become customs in the life of the Balinese” said Eddy, who is also the chief editor of C-Arts magazine.
