OHD Museum Magelang is once again holding a fine arts exhibition. This time it presents a solo visual art exhibition by L.K. Bing titled Cityscape – Mindscape. The exhibition also features 10 old master artworks from the OHD Museum collection, or the personal collection of Dr. Oei Hong Djien.
The exhibition opened on Saturday, March 14, 2026, at 4:00 PM WIB and will run for six months until September 14, 2026. It was inaugurated by Police Commissioner General Prof. Dr. Chryshnanda Dwilaksana, M.Si, a three-star police officer who is also an avid painter.
This exhibition is notable because OHD Museum boldly presents hundreds of works by an artist who is still relatively unknown in the Indonesian art scene. Even in Surabaya, where he lived and worked, L.K. Bing is not widely known among the general art public. However, Dr. Oei Hong Djien emphasized that introducing talented but lesser-known artists is precisely one of a museum’s important roles.
According to Oei Hong Djien, “If a museum exhibits works by famous artists or well-known maestros, that is common and unsurprising. But when a museum showcases high-quality works by artists who are not widely known, it demonstrates integrity and commitment to its long-term vision and mission.”
L.K. Bing was an architect and artist who developed his career in Surabaya. Born in 1972, he passed away on April 30, 2025. After his passing, his family and community were surprised by the large number of artworks he left behind.
For this solo exhibition, the family initially proposed around 264 paintings considered ready for display. After the curatorial process and due to space limitations, approximately 226 works were selected for exhibition. These include watercolor paintings on paper and acrylic paintings on canvas.
The works fall into two main stylistic tendencies: realistic and abstract. In practice, Bing often moved between these two approaches, shifting from expressive realism to abstraction in his paintings.
As an architect, lecturer, and artist, Bing was also actively involved in a community that supported his passion for visual art: the Surabaya Urban Sketchers. Formed around 2013, the community remained active until shortly before his passing. Through this community, Bing further developed his artistic practice and achievements.
He was eventually appointed as a brand ambassador for Daniel Smith, a world-class luxury watercolor brand. The brand has fewer than 100 ambassadors worldwide. In Indonesia, only two artists hold this position: Agus Budiyanto and L.K. Bing.
Bing was chosen because of the quality of his work. As a brand ambassador, he had opportunities to travel internationally. At least once a year, he traveled abroad to paint and mentor watercolor artists.
According to the exhibition’s curator, Kuss Indarto, one of the most striking aspects of Bing’s work—particularly his watercolors—is his mastery of the medium.
“In many of Bing’s works, he is able to create elegant and subtle color gradients that are difficult to achieve with watercolor,” said Indarto. “He also effectively conveys light and volume, even though the works are executed in an expressive realistic style.”
Indarto further explained that Bing consistently focused on landscapes and cityscapes as the primary subjects of his paintings. However, the city is not simply observed and reproduced on paper. Instead, Bing constructs narratives and visual sequences that transform these scenes into “mindscapes” conceived in advance.
His paintings are not merely depictions of urban reality; they are supported by an underlying system of observation and knowledge. For instance, Bing painted Surabaya from multiple perspectives, including the perspective of time. Some works were created through direct on-site observation, while others were developed from archival photographs that he later reinterpreted.
Alongside Bing’s works, the OHD Museum also displays paintings by several old masters. According to Dr. Oei Hong Djien, this pairing aims to remind the public—especially younger generations in the art community—of the achievements of earlier Indonesian artists whose contributions are sometimes overlooked.
These works demonstrate that throughout the history of modern Indonesian art, many artists have produced significant and commendable artistic achievements. In this sense, the exhibition also serves a literary and educational purpose for the broader public.
Approximately 228 works by L.K. Bing are displayed in the exhibition. Many of the watercolor paintings are in quarto or double-quarto sizes, alongside several larger pieces. Because many of the works are both visually strong and thematically focused, the exhibition presents a large number of paintings within a limited space.
The resulting sense of density is intentional. The works are grouped to stimulate the audience’s imagination while viewing them. For example, there are clusters of paintings created during Bing’s visits to cities in Portugal, Italy, and Hungary. Other groupings focus on particular cities such as Chicago, Manchester, Singapore, and Penang, as well as Indonesian cities including Semarang, Surabaya, Bandung, and others.
One of Bing’s greatest strengths lies in his ability to capture the essential character of a place—often represented by a specific corner of a city. He enhances these scenes through the careful rendering of light falling on the subject.
Through a few effective and expressive strokes, viewers can experience urban spaces with rich volumetric qualities and subtle shifts in atmosphere—suggesting morning, midday, or evening within the painted cityscape. []
