Aug/Sept, 1998
No. 036/VI/98
Young Guns
Bali's Generation X speak out
Bali-Sumbawa Surfari
Gone Surfin",
by boat
Imagining the Soul
Health and Beauty
Which Doctor?
Food
Something Fishy
Fiction
Womb by Cok Sawitri
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Art is about
liberation. But can creative freedom survive when art is subjugated to the academy,
critics, or ‘local culture’? This is a question that has confronted most artists
at some stage of their career. Not least Agung Mangu Putra who, in spite of his passage
through the ranks of Yogyakarta’s prestigious art and design school, ISI, has risen
to become one of Bali’s most talented young modern artists. “I believe that art
is an expression of liberation, about the freeing of the imagination and the instincts.
That’s why I don’t want to lock myself into any particular theme, object,
technique or artistic theory,” he told Wayan Suardika, who interviewed him at his
house in Denpasar.
The desire for artistic freedom is what
eventually drew Agung Mangu Putra away from the design industry in which he had been
working for many years. Aware that the design world failed to take art seriously, and
tended to hinder complete, all-out expressions of creativity, even when he was working as
a designer Agung Mangu always made time to paint.
It was only in painting that he felt he could freely apply his
imagination, interpreting his responses to nature as lines and colour variously composed
in a space. “When I’m painting I only have myself to worry about. No more
pamphlets, no more name cards and no more calenders!” he exclaims. “Nor when
painting do I have to rely on other people’s needs or wants. So even if somebody
tells me that they think a piece I am working on looks finished, I won’t stop
painting until I feel in my own heart that the piece has been worked to completion. I
never betray my artistic intuition.”
Agung Mangu’s painting career spans the
decade. He has exhibited widely in Bali (where some of his works are on permanent display
at Jezz Gallery), Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Jakarta, and in 1994 he won the Philip Morris
Award for his ‘Imajinasi Bawah Laut’ (Imagination under the sea). 
But it was only several months ago, at the beginning of 1998, that
the 36-year-old left his day job to paint full-time. As Agung Mangu explains, this entails
much more that standing in front of a canvas all day every day. Since retiring as a
designer he has built a painting studio in his home-town Sangeh, and traveled extensively
Bali’s mountainous hinterlands and coasts in search of inspiration. “I am
besotted with nature,” he announces. For nature, according to Agung Mangu, is about
more than simply beauty. It contains a force which is difficult to put into words.
“There is something awe-inspiring about nature that touches each and every human
being,” he attempts.
Above:
1. "Kawah BIru' (Blue Creater), Oil on canvas. Photo courtesy by Jezz Gallery
2. 'Ikan Purba' (Prehistoric Fish), oil on canvas
3. 'Imajinasi Bawah Laut" (imagination under the sea), oil on canvas.
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