Utin Rini

Utin Rini utilizes almost every single hue that can be produced by acrylic paint pigments in her Sensual Musical series of paintings.

Women are the main focus of Utin's work.  Images of her subjects are appropriated from various portraits-which have been obtained from video stills from the Internet along with other digital imagery from the virtual world.  Through a series of manipulations, Utin transforms these images into a collection of overlapping colour planes; often adding irregular splashes of colour and regular patterns of transparent planes such as the large collection of dots placed over fields of colour.  In this way, Utin reveals the complexity and excitement that colour can afford and ultimately reminds us that these are paintings rather than mere photographic images of female faces.

Colour, says the artist, is how she communicates with her audience; colours allow her to pique their interest or to unsettle them, and can also be used to remind viewers of particular situations or atmospheres.

Utin's work is a testament to an innate wild side, as she has the unique ability to relay certain emotions and feelings that are for most, cautiously hidden, through her paintings. They stir up feelings of awe and even lust and this is what the artist aims to invoke from her audience.

A graduate from the printmaking department at ISI Yogyakarta, Utin has collected numerous awards from her work in her homeland and even from abroad. In 2001, she won best graphic artist at the Indonesian Arts Institute in Yogyakarta. The following year, she was one of the few selected artists for the Phillip Morris Indonesian Art Awards.

More recently, Utin has been focusing on exhibitions to promote her art. Her work has been shown throughout Southeast Asia and as far as the UK.