작품 상세

Jeihan Sukmantoro is dubbed “soul-catcher” by art-writer Ooi Kok Chuen (Interview in Bandung, published in The Sunday Star, Oct 23, 2011) for his prescience in capturing the intrinsic qualities and enigmatic aura of the portraited, just by using black blobs or slits for the eyes. The black eyes device was first used in his 1965 work, Gadis, and was described by Ooi as a “black hole of emotional DNA”. In the interview, he told Ooi: “We are all walking and working in darkness and mystery. We don’t know where we are going, what will happen tomorrow.” Eyes are deemed the windows to one’s soul. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in his Theory of Colour, wrote: “The eye has to thank light for its existence.” The multidisciplinary Jeihan Sukmantoro was a sculptor, ceramist, printmaker (woodcuts) and painter (acrylic, oil, watercolours, pastels) and a published poet. A rebel, he studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology (1960-1966) but did not complete. His best known book of poetry is MATA MBeling Jeihan (2000). Besides in all over Indonesia, he had solo exhibitions in Rome (Italy), Rotterdam (Netherlands), New Jersey (United States), Paris (France), Zurich (Switzerland) and Malaysia.