Budi Kustarto
Nickname "Budi Swiss". He was born in Karangbawang, Central Java, Indonesia, in 1972.
His formal education in Fine Arts started in 1988-1992 as he took to Sekolah Menengah Senirupa (SMSR/High School of Fine Arts),Yogyakarta, majoring in Visual Communication.
In 1998 one of his works was among the 10 Best Art Works in the Philip Morris Art Award.
Education
Having graduated from the sculpture department of the Indonesian Art Institute in 2003, Budi Kustarto's art practice centers around sculpture and painting and the self-portrait format. As a two-dimensional medium, painting presents the Kustarto with a markedly different set of challenges from sculpture - the most evident being the ability to visualize limitations.
Influences
The notion of limitations is very important for the artist. Curator Rizki A. Zaelani explains that Budi Kustarto's works are "critical responses around the issue of limits. He thinks of becoming oneself within a limit (of plaster/fiberglass image).
To Budi, oneself is a 'printout'; it is a result of limitations to give identity, meaning, condition, and so forth Limits here are, to Budi Kustarto, nothing to regret; it is our consciousness that has to work to realize the truth. Limits keep us in alert, aware of life, humanize us."
Limits and limitations are then tested out through the body, which is a site for critical and self-aware experience and evaluation of human life. Hence, many of the paintings produced by the artist sees him in various poses and contortions. The bodies relate to pictorial space - in that sense, the painting, with the bounded dimensions of the canvas, becomes an oxymoronic limited but free space for the artist to articulate the notion of freedom.
Art Works
