Djoko KS at The Bui Gallery

Opening: Fri 03 Sep, 6.30 – 9 pm
Exhibition: 04 – 29 Sep, 11 am – 6 pm
The Bui Gallery

The Bui Gallery presents the exhibition “Energy Within: The Untitled Works of Djoko KS”.

Bui Gallery writes:

If you are a young man of Chinese descent born in the city of Solo, the throbbing heart of Javanese culture, and if you have an inbred talent at painting, what kind of painter do you become? How do your senses and memory filter and organize the visual forms you are exposed to? Which aspects of your mother’s culture, the Javanese and most “unconscious” one, do you fully assimilate, and which ones do you cast away? Which aspects of your father’s culture, the Chinese and most “conscious” one, do you elect to remember, and which to eradicate? To what extent do colonial heritage and Indonesian nationhood help you fashion an image of yourself? The way you translate these problems will tell whether, like many, you simply discourse on your identity, whether, like others, you grow alienated from your roots or more importantly whether, like a few, you sublimate the whole into an original language of art. This is the story of Djoko KS and his artwork.

Djoko’s calligraphic paintings evolved in the artist’s long personal quest for the essence of things and the essence of his Chinese identity. However, to fully uncover, down to its limits, the essence of the Chinese system of form, he had to explore his calligraphic works, which were endowed with the qualities of Chinese calligraphy while moving beyond it and evolving into a language of its own.
Since childhood, Djoko had been longing for the expression of the “essence” of things in accordance with the teachings of his Chinese and Javanese ancestors. Later, as an artist, he experienced a slow maturing process that took him away from realist and “informal” abstraction toward experiments in texture. During these experiments he learned to dig into the essential visual components of the Chinese system of form — minus its calligraphy. At the beginning of the 1990s, he took up the latter challenge. Djoko’s calligraphy has all the outward qualities of classical Chinese calligraphy. It shows perfect control of the quantity of paint used; it is painted in one single stroke during which the whole strength of the “message” appears.

Djoko’s calligraphy, however, goes beyond the functional writing language of Chinese calligraphy. Its object is not to create beauty with a defined linguistic meaning but, going to the gist of Chinese and Oriental spiritual tradition, to convey a philosophical message beyond the scope of language proper. The idea is to explore the essence of the line, the power within the line, and eventually the philosophical signification of the line. It is “graphy” coming back to its original function, as a meaningful statement of Man’s presence in the world. To this statement, however, is now added a new sophisticated touch. Man is not simply showing his presence, like he did in the grottoes of the past; he is now exploring meaning — and the very limits of this exploration — through the language of line and color. We invite you to explore this world through the striking works of Djoko KS.