Mr Universe (Manusia Batu)

Painted in 2002, Mr Universe (Manusia Batu) by I Nyoman Masriadi emerges from the artist's preoccupation with the visualization of the body beautiful. The male figure - muscle and sinews bulging, rippling, magnificently sculpted, and painted in ebony black, is the pinnacle in the painter's visualization of the ideal bodily form. While rendering the body beautiful in disproportion using elements of visual caricature and exaggeration, Masriadi's rendering of anatomy is flawless and instinctively arrived at. The unflinching display and sheer magnificence of the sculpted human body is the key pictorial foci. The figure's physiognomy is executed with a deliberate absence of form and a conscious economy of details. Compared to the rest of the painted figure's body, the face is an almost abstract element. Painted high above the eye level of the viewer, it is a pictorial detail the painter downplays in order that the body - its contours, details and texture - is accentuated.