Think The Chariots of Fire, the 1981 British film about grit and honour in the 1924 Olympics. Though by no means so grand and dramatic, Putu Sutawijaya's painting is a paean to athletic triumph symbolising the eternal Olympic motto of Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster (Swifter), Higher, Stronger). The athletes originally competed naked as a tribute to the god Zeus in ancient Greece as early as 776BC, but the nudity in Putu's work is about the freedom, a quest of immortality and one shorn of inhibitions with the display of the body physique of a veritable Adonis. The exhilaration of triumph is built on hours of self-sacrifices, practice and training, while honing flexibility and strength. Putu's athletic figures with unkempt long hair are arrayed in a clockwork circular motion, more like a Matisse-an dance. As Putu himself had intoned: "The body is the medium of suffering, pain, laughter and fear." The larger context is about LIFE itself, of course – the agony and the ecstasy. Bali-born Putu Sutawijaya is no stranger to Malaysia, his wife, Jenny, being from Malaysia. Putu himself had solos at the Valentine Willie Fine Art (VWFA) in 2006 (Body O) and 2007 (Poems of Nature), besides residency-workshop at VWFA / Patisatu Studio (2006) and VWFA / Gudang (2007). In 2000, he was awarded the coveted Lempad Prize by Sanggar Dewata Indonesia, was one of the Top 10 winners of the Indonesian Asean Art Award, and had a residency at the Museum of Cultures in Basel, Switzerland, in 2001. He had some 30 solos since his first, Energy, at Bendara Budaya Yogyakarta, in 1998. Apart from Indonesia, he has held solos in Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States (Chicago) and Beijing. He had also shown with Bayu Utomo Radjikin at the October Gallery in Yogyakarta (Teroris, 2001) and with Ahmad Zakii Anwar besides Ben Cabrera (Humanities) at Andrer Shire Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2009. He had also taken part in the Art Fair Turin, the Melbourne Art Festival, Art Paris, Art Stage Singapore and the Yogya Biennale. His exalted status in Indonesian art can be gleaned from the (Un)Real exhibition which also featured Affandi, Entang Wiharso and Nasirun at the National Gallery Jakarta in 2006. Putu graduated from the Indonesia Institute of Fine Art (ISI) in Yogyakarta in 1998.