Aan Arif

Biography

Articles

Milovan Sutrisno (edited), Curator

Born in Yogyakarta, 21 April 1973, Indonesia, Arif went to the Senior High School of Fine Arts in Yogyakarta, and went on to continue his education at the Indonesian Institute of Art Yogyakarta. Despite having had his paintings featured in various exhibitions over the years, it was only in 2010 that his work received more attention from the artistic community. He now exhibits his works in prestigious galleries, art exhibitions (Jogja Art Fair), and also in the Museum Sunaryo (Esa Sampoerna).

Realist & Expressionist

Arif’s paintings are characterized by a technique that provides for a meeting between the realist and expressionist. He has the skill of a realist, as well as a great interest inexpressionist brush blows. Arif said: "I love the artist Hendra Gunawan (Indonesian artist) because there is a motion that arises in his paintings because of his wiped brush". Both techniques are interpreted as a technique, rather than ideologies (‘ism’), thus making it possible to combine them with each other.
 
Realists generally draw an object in accordance with real conditions, while the expressionist distorts the real conditions based on artist subjectivity. In modern Indonesian art, those two techniques have a contrasting cultural code and are considered opposite cultural movements. However, in contemporary art practice today, the lack of a uniform ‘ism’ code is commonplace – the visual language of art is nothing more than an appearance or packaging.
 
Arif comes to the discourse of art with a promising technique: his wiped brush on textured surface has become a trademark. From his wiped brush then comes the effects of brushwork, producing slick effects and motion blurs on a textured image. In those areas, some soluble colors are mixed, giving an impression of motion. That, in itself, is his strong artistic potential: the ability to express a motion.
 
When this technique is applied in the painting of character portraits, visual effects lead to the impression of moving memories. At this early stage, he paints the character by combining rough and quick brush techniques to get the effect of brush strokes and palette. When the character of the hero is caught, Arif does not lose a moment, sweeping the images with a brush. This wet technique helps him to express of ideas directly.
 
Popular Icons: Post-Photographic Expression

In modern society, painting is associated as part of the culture of the upper class, while photography considered as part of popular culture. The appearance of class boundaries between them can be encountered within the realm of Pop Art. The presence of the Pop Art movement opened up opportunities for the birth of popular icons as painting subjects. It is from this direction, that icon painting can be traced.
 
Throughout the last two years, Arif painted many famous figures from various countries with different cultural backgrounds, ranging from Soekarno (Indonesia's president) and Marilyn Monroe, to more contemporary icons such as Pippa Middleton. Icon paintings (historical and popular) seem to attact more interest than other subjects, such as kissing scenes and moments within ordinary life. This is perhaps due to the fact that painting portraits of popular figures is a form of subjective reinterpretation of personal images that were remembered by the masses.
 

The iconisation of public figures usually exists in the world of media and therefore, they are skilled incapturing their personalities. Photographic representations of such figures have been featured in autobiographical books, media, and film. However, the characteristics of these public personas are captured both intimately and publicly, because at the end of the day, the legacy of these icons will be remembered and passed down through society’s memory.

Arif, on the other hand, expresses an entirely different dimension of the popular icons he chooses to paint. Nevertheless, due to the celebrity of the personalities in his paintings, they still impose the same reception experience of the post-photography concept. In short, Arif’s paintings have a relationship between the spontaneity of the brush and the “frozen” photography, generated, perhaps, by the effect of a screen of brush strokes with a realist object as a background. The effect is an aesthetic experience that becomes ambiguous or ambivalent: frozen but engaging; clear but vague; painted but photographic, redefining the status of paintings in a post-photographic era and presents a specific experience known as the “in between”.
 
Overall, through his paintings of icons, Arif shows symptoms of a seizure of the character’s image, in a moment, between the public and the private. The Painter represents the individual consciousness, which has a relationship between the aesthetic and the images offered by popular media. Currently, Arief doesn’t want to be simply categorized as an icon painter. He has painted other various subjects and does not want to be shackled to a single concept, wishing to continue to create work that inspires our lives.