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Pande Ketut Taman
(b. 1970 in Peliatan, Bali, Indonesia)
Pande was born into an artistic, religious family. A gifted artist since childhood, he studied painting at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts (Institut Seni Indonesia) in Yogyakarta. He later moved with his wife and family to the small town of Muntilan in Central Java, where he lives and works within sight of both the ancient Buddhist temple of Borododur and of Mount Merapi, an active volcano. Both of these majestic and powerful sites—one man-made and celebrating the spirit, the other natural and conveying the beauty and awesome power of Nature—have strongly influenced Pande’s art. A deeply spiritual connection to the earth is a tangible element of Pande’s sculptures and paintings, and the naturalism of his style reflects his interest in the forms and materials of nature in their most fundamental state. His carved wood sculptures, many of them monumental in size, are often fashioned from the trunks or roots of trees, and depict innumerable, expressively carved human figures that seem to be emerging from the tree itself, like figures in some ancient mythological tale.
In his more recent series of paintings Pande uses a semi-abstract style to depict figures whose gestures communicate a sense of both vulnerability and protectiveness. These paintings were created by Pande after the eruption of Mount Merapi in 2010, when rocks fell like rain on his town.
Painted in earthy tones of brown, ochre and smoky black, the figures are very human in their gestural expressiveness; yet they also convey the solidity of rocks or stone, as though they were in a state of transforming. For Pande, art is a daily-life practice, like taichi or meditation, that allows him to both be nourished by and to celebrate the earth and the spirit, moving from the centre outwards just like a mandala--from the microcosm of the body, to his family, his town, the forests and mountains that surround him, the society to which he belongs, and the cosmos which encompasses all of us.
Has been with Sin Sin Fine Art since 2008.
EXHIBITION HISTORY • Full CV in PDF
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