The candi bentar (split gateway) at the entrance of some religious compounds in Bali has obviously seen better days. The candis are also a standard feature at Kraton palaces or cemeteries in Java. The bright contrast of colours especially shimmers and plays tricks with the years. Even the old stuccoed bulwarks of the candis seem coated with a new gloss. A half nude damsel tarries at the gate, waiting for her amour perhaps or deigning to go inside out of respect because it is sacred grounds. The pagoda, in mauve tones, towers off-centre inside the compound. “Colours are my breath, the unity and peace on the colours are reflections of my inner self,” the artist Dandung Kahono had intoned. In Dandung Kahono’s second work featured in the same lot, the Borobudur enveloping the whole breadth of the work, is shown as dark, mysterious but beckoning the faithfuls as well as the curious tourists to explore the ancient 9th century Mahayana Buddhist temple, the biggest in the world, in Magelang. It is listed as a Unesco Heritage site with 504 Buddha statues and 2,672 relief panels. The three tiers of the Javanese-Gupta Buddhist structure symbolizes Buddhist cosmology with the Kamadhatu (world of desire), Rupadhatu (world of forms) and the Arupadhatu (world of formlessness). Dandung Kahono studied at the Indonesian Arts Institute (Asri) in Yogyakarta in 1971, and studied graphic design at the ITB Bandung in 1972-1978. He has had three solos since 1997 at the Gallery Rio Brazil in Jakarta, Color In Concerto at Elcanna Fine Art in Jakarta in 2006, and The Colours of the World at The Peak in Bandung in 2007.