Yunizar: New Perspectives

Gajah Gallery is proud to launch the first publication which explores the over two-decade oeuvre of renowned Indonesian artist, Yunizar. The book contains essays by esteemed art historians and curators, T.K. Sabapathy, Aminudin T.H. Siregar, Ahmad Mashadi and Katherine Bruhn. In conjunction with the book's launch, the Gallery in Singapore will hold a solo exhibition with a curated selection of works.

The show traces the trajectory of Yunizar’s artistic career: from his late 1990s paintings depicting psychologically-charged figures in dark, earthy colours; his mid-2000s Coretan works that incorporated rhythmic, impressionistic scribbles and drew our attention to the emotional power of language; to his bold, eccentric bronze sculptures in the 2010s.

Edited by T.K. Sabapathy, the seminal book examines the deeper and broader implications of Yunizar’s work. Siregar contextualises Yunizar within the pioneering art collective KSR Jendela, and situates his oeuvre within the broader contexts of Indonesian art history. Bruhn’s interview with Yunizar offers a revealing account of how he emerged as an artist from his unique artistic heritage in West Sumatra. Sabapathy traces the artist’s unexpected, yet steady expansion into three-dimensional art practice. Finally, Mashadi presents a fascinating historiographical account of debates surrounding KSR Jendela’s significance.

The book ultimately marks 15 years’ worth of critical and institutional acclaim for Yunizar, both within Southeast Asia and across the globe. In 2007, he held a solo show at the National University of Singapore Museum (NUS), Singapore. His works are currently found in the collections of major art institutions, such as the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), the Long Museum in Shanghai, and the Benesse Art Collection in Japan. Most recently, in 2021, he was the only Southeast Asian artist selected to participate in Frieze Sculpture, London.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Yunizar (b. 1971, Talawi, West Sumatra, Indonesia) earned his fine arts degree at the Indonesian Institute of Arts in Yogyakarta – a school of national pride in the heart of Indonesia’s artistic and cultural capital. During his studies, Yunizar co-founded an art group called the Kelompok Seni Rupa Jendela together with five other Minang students. Amid the socio-political art that flooded the Indonesian art world after the 1998 Reformation, which saw the fall of the Suharto regime, the KSR Jendela crucially avoided overtly political themes. Instead, the group acted as a sanctuary for the artists to exchange ideas, experiment with form and material, and hone their distinct artistic sensibilities. By the late 1990s, the works that Yunizar produced were a breath of fresh air. Resisting grand, heroic narratives and didactic messages in his work, Yunizar set his gaze instead on the everyday—determined to articulate the feeling and essence, or rasa, of subjects that animated his immediate surroundings.

Yunizar’s crude, childlike style, composed of raw lines and fantastical imagery, may appear naive at first glance, but in fact radiates deep mystery and elegance. Over the years, Yunizar has carefully transformed his practice, exploring motifs that increasingly collapse boundaries between the real and the imaginary—from homes and dwellings, to mythical creatures such as the symbolically charged Garuda, enshrined on Indonesia’s national emblem. ​ Then, in 2012, Yunizar unexpectedly ventured into sculpture. Since then he has transformed whimsical subjects, such as village gangsters and primordial monsters, into arresting bronze creations.

Amid these dynamic changes in his oeuvre, what persists to fuel Yunizar’s practice is a deep-seated trust in his intuition, and a singular ability to see poetry and power in the ordinary. His works have garnered critical acclaim within Southeast Asia and across the globe.