Faisal Habibi: Stretch & Fold

With Stretch & Fold Jarmuschek + Partner presents for the first time three-dimensional wall works and drawings by Faisal Habibi in a solo exhibition.

In his unique sculptural works, the Indonesian artist deals with space and materiality in a complex way. Their numerous levels oscillate between soothed surfaces, straight edges, and dynamic forms. The objects, made of materials such as Plexiglas, steel and wooden panels, open up a tense dialogue between evenly industrial production and, at times, organic-looking, individual handiwork. The visualization of this process of creation plays a major role: in addition to uniform coloration, irritations such as unintentional voids and gestural traces of color repeatedly appear, which in their brittleness and irregularity seem in a painterly way like pre- or post-stages of perfection, evoke associations and tell of man as creator. In the machine precision, the human warmth is thus transformed into a mirroring consumption - interface.

Again and again, particular details evoke memories of well-known cultural products and objects from our daily environment when we take a closer look: aren't we facing handrails, handles, knobs, pipes, and conduits? We can almost sense a functionality, which, however, never becomes finally tangible. The most diverse materials nestle together poetically, seeming to interact with each other almost as if in a dance. Profile shapes familiar from stucco moldings or framing convey a dimension of space that seems folded up in these multilayered reliefs and yet infinitely continuable.

It is precisely the contrasting nature of the surface structures that makes us think of haptic experiences we have already had and creates an intense need to touch and feel these works - a mischievous play on the inaccessibility and untouchability of art as distinct from the utilitarian object. By abstracting the representational that is familiar to us, Faisal Habibi immerses us in a place where man and machine, tradition and limitless imagination communicate.

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Faisal Habibi was born in 1984 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Until 2008, he studied at the Sculpture Studio of the Faculty of Art and Design at the Institute of Technology Bandung.

His works have already been awarded with the Indonesia Art Award (Juror's Choice, National Gallery in Jakarta, 2008), the first prize for Three-Dimensional Works of from the Salihara Society (Jakarta 2013), and the Bandung Contemporary Art Award (Special Mention, Jakarta 2015). In 2014, ZKU - Center for Art and Urbanism supported him with an artist residency in Berlin.

In addition to numerous participations in art fairs, biennials and museum exhibitions mostly in the Asian region, Faisal Habibi has been represented several times at Art Basel Hong Kong, including a solo presentation of his sculptural works in 2018.
 

The exhibition Stretch & Fold is made possible by the Neustart Kultur program and Stiftung Kunstfonds.