Featured Artist

I Wayan Sujana (SUKLU)

I Wayan Sujana affectionately goes by the name Suklu. Suklu is short for Sujana Klungkung, meaning Sujana who comes from Klungkung. Klungkung used to be the location of the central government, where the Balinese painting reached its golden age. Born on February 6, 1967, Suklu became a young artist that shines and progressive in his work, noting that his birthplace became a positive motivation for him to produce his art pieces.

The existence of Suklu as Balinese artist in the contemporary art scene is interesting to follow. With his Balinese background, Suklu offered a different taste in his works: local values which can be digested universally. His scope of work is not only limited to 2-dimensional, but also 3-dimensional that covers installation art and performance art, but also art projects that involve a lot of audience. Suklu emerge as one of the young artists that can give a different countenance to the development of painting art in Bali.

During 1992-1997 Suklu chose to broaden his art knowledge in Institut Seni Indonesia, ISI, (Indonesian Art School), Denpasar. In the beginning, Suklu was very influenced by Ubud traditional painting style. Later on, Suklu adapted deformation style to women figures on his works. The loss of mother figure during his childhood scored a deep record on his subconscious world. Through women figures Suklu could express much about cultural, gender, male domination over female, etc. In 2000, during the time Suklu consolidated on delving of women issues, he offered a new search called meditative repetitive which is an effort to transfer meditation methods on paintings. The concept of line repetitions was inspired by meditation methods and the priests' repetitive bell chimes (pedanda and pemangku), giving calm situation in Hindu ceremony procession.

Suklu's discovery on meditative repetitive did not lessen his desires to women figures. In his works between 2005-2009, until now, Suklu once again put forward women figures combined with line repetition on canvas. The lines on Suklu's work not only portray himself as esthetical phenomena (discussing about movements, composition and shapes), but within there is a deep comprehension of a person called Suklu about the meaning of his interconnection with various aspects outside himself, which in reality very closely affect his creativity acceleration during all this time.