Jakarta Post
JAKARTA, INDONESIA, July 10, 2003: Ketut Budiana, Bali’s most creative “post-traditional” artist, was guest of honor at Tokyo Station Gallery, where he held a retrospective exhibition from June 14-21, 2003. A low-profile artist, Budiana is little known in the Indonesian art world beyond a small circle of local and foreign initiates. Budiana’s works are often described as dark canvases with a minimum use of color and contain a world of figures symbolizing the cosmic forces of Hindu tradition. He doesn’t simply narrate stories of heroes and Gods. He instead borrows these figures to be the players of philosophical Hindu themes that he interprets his own ways. “Nothing is inherently good or evil,” says Budiana, “but rather all entities and forces move between positive and negative states. What appears negative in one context is positive in another. The dissolution of the physical body in the grave fills us with horror. Yet, with deeper insight, this process allows dead matter to become the basis for a new life.” Budiana is one of the last wanderer-cum-teacher artists. He has been called to Java and Lombok for the making of temple sculptures, and people often come to him to inquire how things should be from a classical point of view.