Coming Home: Momentary Lapse

I Made Arya Palguna, an artist born in Ubud, Bali in 1976, will present his most recent work in a solo exhibition entitled “Coming Home: Momentary Lapse.” The show will be held at Komaneka Fine Art Gallery, Monkey Forest Road in Ubud, and will be opened by Bapak Koman Wahyu Suteja on Friday, 28th December 2018 and run until Monday, 28th January 2019.

After more than twenty years of adventure in Yogyakarta, Palguna has come home to “the island of the gods” to feel the warmth and coolness of the air of Bali. Returning to organize life anew in Bali is a very significant change in the life of this artist—a time to reconnect the trail of memory of things left behind and to encounter a changing reality. The exploding emotional turmoil and leaps of energy are transformed beautifully into painting and sculpture.

To come to Bali as a Balinese is, of course, different from coming to Bali as a tourist or foreign visitor. Palguna finds that reality has changed. Childhood friends are now grown up, and he returns with the responsibility of being the head of a family. Much in Bali looks different and changes are under way, creating in Palguna deep impressions that provoke anxiety and questions. This is the basis of the themes of Palguna’s recent works. In this exhibition, Palguna presents twenty paintings and five sculptures, all made in 2018.

Visually, Palguna’s work speaks in light and simple imagery, but actually it embraces a high degree of complexity. The intelligence of the artist is in expressing a complicated sense of his presence again in his homeland with a language that appears harmonious. Criticism, protest and anger are packaged in a poetic surface.

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