Beyond Boundaries –
Living in Gallery with Made Mahendra Mangku

In the ‘Living in Gallery’ program, each artist gets a total of 24 hours to use the Komaneka Gallery space as their personal studio. I Made Mahendra Mangku, however, sped through it in 12 hours.

We’ve always known how eager he was; when we offered him the opportunity to participate a few months ago, he came up with the concept immediately. His sense of immediacy is facilitated through his choice of medium: watercolour, a medium known for its speed and spontaneity. For Mangku, “watercolour has more challenges. It uses water as a medium which makes it harder to hide mistakes on paper, as it’s very fragile. That’s why many call it a high art form.”

‘Beyond Boundaries’ is the title Mangku chose to encompass a series of watercolour paintings on paper and canvas he created in the gallery currently on display. What differs these works from others in his collection is the choice of watercolour techniques, a reflection of Mangkus’s mastery of the watercolour technique that he’s applied to other mediums. On larger pieces of paper he brings his water gun bottle from home and each spritz of water is used to expand the colours into sweeping forms and strokes. He starts with one side of the media, then he asks the Komaneka Gallery team to rotate it so he can paint the other side – but ever so slightly, as when the paint is still wet the canvas has to be rotated carefully or else the watercolour would fall and spread through.

Mangku’s passion for painting started in high school, and upon graduating from Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta in 1997 he has exhibited his works domestically and internationally.

When you visit his neat studio where he also lives with his family in Sukawati, Gianyar, you will find a large watercolour painting of the Buddhist temple near his hometown done in a realistic manner with expressive strokes of pencil underneath.

The subject matter of each painting in the exhibition is also a reflection of his immediate surroundings. A cliff, a mountain, a tree bark– are all formed by Mangku’s deep instinct of colour and informed by his personal history. Each colour is chosen by intuition and backed by stories from him and his friends. The purples, greens and yellows set on an optimistic note that he wishes to convey in these times of uncertainty as he invites each one of us to be more intimate with our memories and soluble in recognising each compositions, elements, and space.

10 November 2021
Sri Pande W