Context Art Miami: Suanjaya Kencut

We are pleased to announce our participation to 'CONTEXT Art Miami', with a presentation featuring a new series of artworks on canvas by Sunajaya Kencut.

Titled “Guardian Galaxy”, this presentation will showcase a series of paintings, never revealed before, focused on the exploration from different perspectives of the figure of an unconventional superhero. This new body of works include five round canvases, 60 inches in diameter and four slightly smaller rectangular canvases. The artist in his childhood, as most of the kids, has aways wondered if he could have become a superhero and fly up into the sky through the clouds, while wearing an old blanket as a cloak. But then was getting suddenly discouraged because the traditional characters are depicted as athletic, powerful, and dashing men and he didn't have the stocky, strong manly body seen every day on television. Another frustrating issue was that commonly all the aliens that were landing from other planets looked like monsters, were treated like enemies and needed to be exterminated. These facts were raising further questions about aliens being evil or not, life outside our world and if other planets had superheroes too. This multi generational childhood fantasies could appear shabby but are able to lift extremely sensitive and contemporary issues as long as to generate a strong interest from a very variegated audience, boosting from Kawaii art lovers to sci-fi movies, comics and video games aficionados to figures collectors and rising diversified social, gender and psychological interpretations. This pushed Suanjaya to bring his childhood reveries into this new series. He fantasizes about superheroes not following any predetermined physical or gender stereotype, not only existing in the human world, but in other parts of the universe, and about aliens being friendly, graceful and inclusive, not scary or belligerent. Kencut created his own planet inhabited by individuals who have radar shaped ears, used for communicating with each other, as well as connecting with living forms on other planets and in between galaxies. In the ‘Connection Series’ he describes how they can walk in the air, swarm with each other accepting everyone diversity, free from any discrimination, like an advanced social community. The ‘Guardian Galaxy’ is the paladin of this progressive society and the cloak, a symbol very important to the artist as a childhood memory and previously explored in other series, defines the character stature. With the existence of the superhero there is also his counterpart, the enemy, depicted in the painting ‘The Villain’ without dreadful appearances or monstrous features, defeated by ‘The Captain’, with the help of his friends, who, after the strenuous battle, like every regular being, is tired and need to will chill a relax, together with the companions he just saved, in the artwork ‘The Break’.

As a child of Bali, Kencut (B. 1994) understands deeply the richness and magic of the indigineous culture of his land. Art has been a part of his life since he was in vocational high school, and since then it has served as the foundation for his painting practice. Following that, he continued his education in art at the Yogyakarta Indonesian Art Institute. Conceived as a rediscovery of the island culture, his artistic creation comes from the interconnections of history, tradition, and religion. Based on his understanding of Indonesian local culture, Kencut has further expanded his art beyond the limit of the island's traditions and started to broaden and to include more diverse perspectives of the world beyond. The tunnel vision in his painting, the button-eyed creatures all came out of this combination. His current artistic technique is also closely tied to the accumulation of experiences embedded within his subconscious since childhood, and it reflects his past experience in a culminative way. The central character as the stuffed dolls with whimsical patterns and buttons for the eyes was inspired by a chance conversation between him and Ary Indra, a well-known Indonesian architect. Despite his young age Kencut has exhibited abundantly in Asia, Europe and the U.S. and had 8 solo exhibitions and 51 group presentations since 2016.

Source: GR gallery