The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Ivan Sagito was born in 1957 in Lawang, Java, Indonesia. While he was studying in junior high school, he met Bambang Soegeng, a well-known painter in Lawang. This self- educated painter taught him that creating a work of art is expressing directly what one feels. Working with a group of artists organised by Bambang Soegeng, Ivan Sagito was already productive as a painter at the age of fifteen. In 1975, he enrolled at the Indonesian Art College in Yogyakarta. Here, he was among young artists exploring a kind of photographic realism as a reaction against the decorative and expressionistic trends of the day. Co- incidentally, the pocket camera emerged in this time and gained rapid popularity in Indonesia. Many artists painted the photographs they took. Some, like Ivan Sagito, created mixed images which at first glance resembled surrealistic paintings. In Yogyakarta, Ivan Sagito lived an un- conventional existence with poor people under a bridge in a slum area, and found this INDONESIA IVAN SAGITO lmajl Pada liang Jemuran 111991 Oil on canvas 110x140cm a rich source of inspiration for his work. In 1979 he enrolled at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta, majoring in painting, and continued to paint the life of the poor- their places of living, their problems and their beliefs. At the same time he organised a studio with other young painters to work as an artist. Even as a student he began to win recognition, his ability to paint imaginative scenes with a very realistic technique at- tracting the attention of critics. After winning the Best Painting Award at the 'Jakarta Biennale for Young Artists' in 1989, he gained national recognition. He held a solo exhibition at the Duta Fine Art Gallery, Jakarta in 1988, and his work has been represented in a number of group exhibitions including '3rd Asian Art Show', Fukuoka, Japan, 1989; 'Indonesian Modern Art', touring ASEAN countries, 1990, 'Indo- nesian Modern Art', Indonesian Festival, touring Un ited States, 1990-91; 'ASEAN Festival of the Arts', Yogyakarta, 1992; and 'Jakarta Art & Design Expo 1992'. With his 18 family he still lives among poor people in a crowded area in Yogyakarta. Ivan Sagito's capacity to create individual symbols through a very realistic style has gained wide acceptance for his work. The easily interpreted images of his paintings make them accessible to a wide range of people, while the individualism of his symbols has won the acclaim of Indonesian art critics. He is one of a number of young artists who express ideas and feelings through very imaginative scenery; these resemble sur- realistic images, though he does not see himself generally as a surrealist painter. He notes that he has never followed surrealist principles. Ivan Sagito's paintings portray the life of the poor, but not from a viewpoint of social cri ti cism. Rather, the hardship of their existence has awoken in him a search for the essentially spiritual aspects of their lives. A sense of a mystical relationsh ip, for example, emerges between people and the objects which surround them- banana leaves, the puppets of wayang shows, masks .. .- which cannot be explained rationally. His feelings for such objects arise from emotional, almost mystical, experiences. He explains: I felt something strange when I had to draw water from the well. Or when I saw how people were attached to wayang shows, and followed the storytelling as if it was a sermon. Or when the total silence emerges in nights in our crowded community. Like many Javanese, Ivan Sagito believes in predestination, as if life is in some way like the wayang puppet show, with a superior hand controlling everything. World and wayang (also titled Wayang and mask) depicts the death of a mother. The actual life story is presented in the background in the form of a crying daughter and a hut which is a symbol of poverty. But in the foreground, the dying woman is shown surrounded by masks and wayang puppets. Some are flying, suggesting spirits of the dead. While not all of Ivan Sagito's paintings depict mystical experiences or the super- natural, most of his work evokes spiritual values within a materialist world. Jim Supangkat