Jumaldi Alfi (Indonesia, 1973) is one of the most influential artists of the contemporary Indonesian. As a painter and a sculptor, Alfi has established himself internationally at the end of the nineties as one of the founders of the famous Jandela Art Group along with other internationally renowned artists such as Handiwirnam Saputra, Rudi Mantofani, Yunizar and Yusra Martunus.

The group focused on the aesthetics of the materials, where they introduced new dynamics and new ways of interpreting contemporary art in Indonesia.

Jumaldi Alfi is particularly known for his iconography that is expressed through visual signs that reflect the experience of existential and spiritual collectively and individually. When preparing its code images, the artist chooses to use a wide range of cultural references from the objects of the natural world, to Renaissance paintings up to his autobiographical memories. The result is a work that appears to be at the same time intimate and mysterious.

Alfi traces, through his works, the historical origins of modern and contemporary art in his country. In the work of Melting Memories series, the artist is based on the style of painting "Mooi Indie", also known as "Indonesia Molek", made famous during the Dutch colonization and characterized by an almost bucolic painting of those who at the time were landscapes India Dutch.

The works reflect the Blackboard Series, however, the fascination with artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Beuys and Ed Ruscha. These boards, in which also the frames and tape are painted, are a paradox and intend to urge the consciousness of the viewer.

"Experience is the best teacher" is the motto of the artist, who chooses some typical instruments of school education, such as blackboards, in this case, painted on the canvas as a surface to unfold his artistic research. On the canvas, Alfi gives an ironic lesson through their written words. Words borrowed from the artists mentioned above, but not only. The artist cleverly uses the device of quotation, creating linguistic associations that he relates to the subjective experience. The changes and breaks in the original meaning of the references chosen by Alfi are implemented through the cancellation of some words that leave on the board of the zones of white chalk.

Seemingly simple, Alfi's works are the result of multiple layers of paint and great technical ability, ability to convey, through the choice of signifiers universally recognizable meanings sometimes cryptic, sometimes explicit, never dull and always in acrobatic balancing on the thin time line that unites and divides the re-enactment of the past and the appropriation of the present.

Image: © Jumaldi Alfi, Primo Marella Gallery