Gajah Gallery is participating in this year’s Art Moments Jakarta offline edition! We are proud to present a solo exhibit by Ibrahim, showcasing a range of his peerless abstract work over the past three years.
An influential figure in the Indonesian art community, Ibrahim is known for his “intuitive” abstract-expressionist paintings rooted in an acute awareness of feeling; his method of painting being an exploration of inner turbulence. Ibrahim’s arrangement and juxtaposition of every stroke, line, unresolved shape or unfixed contour is an exploration, and a means to achieve the painting’s final composition. Notably, Ibrahim’s paintings are often untitled, encouraging viewers to attach their own personal and subjective experiences to the pieces. This quality thus creates space for a unique and intimate engagement between the artwork and its spectator. For Ibrahim, a painted canvas does not indicate a final product—but instead presents the inception of a potentially shared human experience.
While Ibrahim is also recognised as a respected art teacher, having moved back to his hometown in West Sumatra to teach at the ISI Padang Panjang in 2006, he garnered critical acclaim as an artist as early as 2001. That year, he received the Asean Art Award (AAA) and was a finalist at the prestigious Philip Morris Indonesia Art Award. The jury then described his work as striking and poignantly critical, but noted that it also had the potential to evoke a sense of enlightenment. Behind his wide range of works, one can discover his concern for the paradox of morality and truth amidst sadism, violence and injustice. As described in a Harper’s Bazaar article in 2002, his work is expressive, a manifestation against terrorizing realities. His oeuvre has undoubtedly evolved and expanded over the past two decades—yet a sharp awareness of the fluctuations, and even the beauty, of one’s interior life amidst the harshness of the wider world persists to be the lifeblood of his art.
