Drama

It is rare to come across an artist as productive and creative as Saeful Bahri.

Young artist Saeful Bahri’s prodigious talent, combined with discipline and a sense of purpose, gives his work a strong focus and bodes well for his future in the Indonesian art scene.

The Jakarta-based Sasak artist, known as Epul, recently took part in the 10th anniversary of the Philo Art Space in Kemang, South Jakarta, where his pieces hung alongside others representing Jakarta’s contemporary art scene.

The exhibition was an eclectic mix of genres with no particular overarching theme. The dominant style, however, tended toward surrealism and Epul’s work was right at home there.

Begawe Bleq

In his mid-30s, Epul has held six solo exhibitions, including at Koi Gallery in Kemang in January of this year, and his works were recently featured in the Lombok Kane! exhibition at The Studio in Senggigi, Lombok. He has also contributed to over 30 group exhibitions in Jakarta, Bali, Lombok and Yogyakarta.

Born in Lombok in 1979, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Denpasar (SMSRN) and the Indonesian Arts Institute in Yogyakarta, where he received a number of awards.

He has since been based in Jakarta, but Lombok looms large in his work, reflecting a strong sense of identity with his island home.

Epul cited Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, Indonesian masters like Dullah and Affandiand as well as Bali-based Spanish artist Antonio Blanco as among his prominent influences.

He said his work has not always been as bright and colorful as it is now. He calls the late 1990s and early 2000s his “dark phase”, a time in which the work was heavily influenced by early 20th century European surrealism. He then went through a period of searching, which led to what he calls his “bright phase” and a style that he says “is born of an optimistic attitude, with free personality expressed in the painting”.

Epul is a disciplined artist. His paintings are evidence of a positive nervous energy, with bold colors and strong designs.

But the current work is perhaps best described as playful — he plays with familiar scenes and the human form, which he sometimes bends and stretches into surprising shapes.

The works range from a kind of ultrarealism to the fantasy of contemporary surrealism.

Raise

Using dynamic color and sharp lines on large canvas frames, he gives us glimpses of men in traditional garb serving soup from a Lombok clay pot, traditional cooking over a fire, dancing figures in the firelight, a woman bent over coffee and a book in a warung, a Sasak weaver, women winnowing rice.

But the artist transforms these traditional images into something more: By subtly shifting our sense of reality he turns the ordinary into the extraordinary.

His artistic philosophy is simple: “Every work that I create that is enjoyed or appreciated,” he says, “is a gift, an artistic expression that represents my sense of my environment, my surroundings”.

— Photos courtesy of Saeful Bahri

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