Sutjipto Adi has already been identified as one of the most notable of the painters that have emerged from Yogyakarta in the 1980s. The adherents of the approach that was widely used in Yogyakarta at that time, including Adi, employ a sophisticated photographic realism technique, including the use of perspective to create three dimensional space, volume, and mass.
    In developments that followed, Adi combined his expert painting technique, particularly the use of shading, with various other methods that supported his expression, such as the use of silk screening on the canvas. Of course, these techniques always supported his preference for photographic realism. The use of silk-screening, for instance, has been very effective in creating shaded characters, such as the figure of Mother Theresa which can be found in the “Love for Children” (1998) painting.

THREE PERIODS OF CREATION

With more than 20 years devoted to painting, it is possible to distinguish at least three periods of creation in Sutjipta Adi’s works. Each period can be viewed as a stage in Adi’s consistent efforts to investigate his spiritual experience and reach the zone of perfection, the place where humans will find the real essence of humanity.
    The first period is signified by a group of works that were produced towards the end of the 1970s. This is the series of paintings that Adi created when he was still young, after passing through his formal education in art and design. His works from this period implied that the universe was the focus of the painter’s contemplation. Here, nature was figured out as a treasure of geometrical shapes and colours, such as bars, cubes, prisms, pyramids, cones, balls... and many more. There was no inclusion of actual living forms, so the effect was cool and strange, and a screaming atmosphere was created.

In the second period, which began in the early 1980s, Adi moved to the human character. The geometric universe still dominated the painting space, but inside it was possible to discover the figures of humans (and animals) described in detail, both in realistic forms or anatomically. These figures were connected to each other and became unified through the complicated net of lines and flat surfaces that intersected each other to form slots. It should be noted that in this period Adi had a strong tendency to see humans as physical and spiritual creators (through the use of mystical symbols, such as the meditation position). These figures were often absorbed in a strange form of “nature” that projected a spiritual image but was, paradoxically, strange and fearing. The painting entitled “Introspection III” (1989), for instance, visibly indicated this tendency.
Critic Sanento Yuliman spoke in a review about Adi’s single exhibition in 1987, describing the futuristic perspective of the paintings from this period. Geometric profiles and constructions, slick surface images without texture, broad space filling nothing except the human and geometric shapes on Adi’s canvas: all invite Yuliman’s assessment of the association towards super modern architecture and outer space development. This is also apparent, he believes, through the descriptions of the human body that express the unity of the organism and engineering.
    “In Sutjipto Adi’s paintings, a lot of objects and angles simulate our association with future technology, like in science fiction movies,” he wrote. This association finally leads Yuliman to the conclusion that the mixture of mystical symbols and futuristic imagery in Adi’s works is, “a less than happy marriage that leads to an ambiguity in our minds.”

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Top : Meditation, 1996.
below: Welcome to my world 1995
Bottom : Woman, 1999

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