Kuncir Satya Viku

Dopamine Realm, 2025
150 x 150 cm
Acrylic and ink on mulberry paper mounted on canvas

Kuncir’s visual language draws its roots from Balinese drawing traditions, particularly the rerajahan, a form of sacred diagram or pictorial prayer, typically featuring a singular central figure accompanied by script or sacred text. Through a personal approach infused with wit, satirical humor, and a blend of tradition and modernity, Kuncir’s surreal exploration of rerajahan reflects a hybrid, shamanistic visuality. His works navigate the tension between tradition and contemporary culture, reinterpreting rerajahan within the discourse of contemporary art.

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In Dopamine Realm (2025), Kuncir presents a vibrant and chaotic visual field, saturated with clashing bright colors and fragmented figures and objects. This visual cacophony centers on the theme of dopamine as the core concept, portraying a psychological landscape that critiques the modern condition where society is increasingly trapped in a pursuit of manufactured happiness.

From Kuncir’s observation of contemporary culture, there appears to be a growing compulsion to seek artificial dopamine highs. For Kuncir, this pursuit feels unnatural and fabricated, embodied by hedonistic behaviors like doomscrolling, impulsive shopping, casual sex, binge watching, and more. These activities create an illusion of pleasure, fostering a shallow, disconnected complexity in human daily life anchored in physical sensation, subjective feeling, and personal gratification.

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This narrative unfolds through a reimagining of rerajahan. The composition evokes a floating space, symbolizing the flexibility of tradition while remaining rooted in cultural identity. This spatial treatment gestures to the adaptive nature of tradition, capable of engaging with both local and global contexts. The work is executed on ulantaga or daluang paper, traditionally used in Balinese rerajahan in specific symbolic cuts. Kuncir arranges these in a modular grid, referencing the concept of rwa bhineda, the balance of opposing forces, the micro and macro worlds.

Lines, central to rerajahan iconography, are used here to depict figures and social phenomena, reflecting modern day behaviors and anxieties. Kuncir’s technical approach and symbolic visuals offer a critical lens on the pursuit of pleasure and meaning in today’s world, positioning Dopamine Realm firmly within the discourse of contemporary Balinese art.