SIMPLIFYING CILEDUG'S SPATIAL FORMS USING SMEARING PALETTE IN CONTEMPORARY PAINTING

Rapid overdevelopment in Ciledug has narrowed living space and displaced green areas, most visibly through the concrete pillars of the Transjakarta Elevated Busway. This practice-based research in Contemporary Painting aims to translate the experience of spatial compression into a visual language by simplifying the form of Ciledug’s urban space, and to test whether abstraction can convey spatial anxiety more directly than representation. The creative method consisted of three stages: interviews with a partner (NPAAW) to capture the lived experience of the space, direct observation of the elevated lane’s line patterns, and sketch development, which produced six abstract paintings. The sketches reduce the viaduct’s structure to orthogonal lines and flat planes, adapting the radical simplification of Piet Mondrian’s De Stijl. Here, the grid is not a symbol of harmony but of constraint. Positive-negative space contrasts show built mass dominating the remaining void, and clashing psychedelic colors evoke restlessness. A coarse texture of waterproofing paint, limestone powder, acrylic, and white glue stands in for the harshness of concrete. Palette knife smearing, inspired by Gerhard Richter, blurs and scrapes the geometric order, so the structure appears unstable rather than neutral. A passe-partout border around the canvas marks the remaining space and focuses attention on the central issue. The series shows that geometric simplification, material texture, and gestural smearing together can express the tension between order and pressure in urban space, and it offers a visual critique of the continued exploitation of limited living space.