About PUTU SUTAWIJAYA | Earthly Evocations at Sin Sin Fine Art

Putu Sutawijaya was born in Tabanan, Bali in 1971. He attended the Indonesian High School of Fine Arts in Denpasar, graduating in 1991, and immediately went on to become part of the vibrant scene at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta. He currently lives and works in Yogyakarta and Bali. As a painter, sculptor and performance artist, Putu embodies the multi-media, cross-disciplinary character of Indonesian contemporary art. At the same time, a main focus of his work is the human body as both an expressive form and a vessel of the spirit: as Putu says, ‘the body is the medium of suffering, pain, laughter and fear.’ The spontaneous energy of Putu’s paintings translates naturally into his sculptures. As the Indonesian critic Kris Budiman has pointed out, it is almost as though the figures in his paintings have ‘crossed over into three-dimensional space…to look for meaning in different contexts.’

Whether created with materials as varied as cloth and paper, industrial machine parts or the motions of his own body, it is above all the gestural movement of Putu’s works that communicate an intense spectrum of spiritual and emotional states, from contemplation to sorrow to the pure exuberance of dance. Like the artist Pande Ketut Taman, Putu is also deeply drawn to sacred sites and often travels to the ancient temples scattered around Java and Bali, where he spends days painting. This visceral connection to the sacred site is translated also in Putu’s figurative works, through the idea of the sacredness of the ‘body temple’. In his recent Gesticulation series made of salvaged machine parts and scrap metal, the incredible dynamic energy coursing through the cast-off materials of which the figures are shaped is a powerful reminder of the artist’s potential to re-claim what has been cast off: a joyful celebration of human potential to sanctify and re-energize every part of our world.

Gesticulation #1 | Iron Wire, Recycled Metal | 50x70x115 cm | Putu Sutawijaya©2010

Gesticulation #4 | Iron Wire, Recycled Metal | 137x72x115 cm | Putu Sutawijaya©2010

Gesticulation #11 | Iron Wire, Recycled Metal | 75x65x115 cm | Putu Sutawijaya©2010

	Earthly Evocations: Indonesian Art Now 17 May - 17 June 2012
	Curatorial Notes \| The Artists