Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Haris Purmono’s Honest Portraits Show the Faces of Indonesia

Haris Purmono's hyperrealistic portraits illustrate resilience. The Indonesian artist began his practice in the 1970s under Suharto's military government and the battle-scarred faces of his civilian subjects symbolize the country's difficult past. Purmono's sitters are everyday individuals whose faces the artist embellishes with bandages and dragon tattoos. Despite their different ethnicities and social classes, these symbols unite the subjects of his work and hint at their shared cultural history.

Haris Purmono’s hyperrealistic portraits illustrate resilience. The Indonesian artist began his practice in the 1970s under Suharto’s military government and the battle-scarred faces of his civilian subjects symbolize the country’s difficult past. Purmono’s sitters are everyday individuals whose faces the artist embellishes with bandages and dragon tattoos. Despite their different ethnicities and social classes, these symbols unite the subjects of his work and hint at their shared cultural history.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Detroit based artist Akira Beard has a self-described obsession with the human face and hot color palettes. When we last saw him, he was living in San Francisco and celebrating his ‘American Inconomics” show (featured here). His drippy, surreal watercolors break apart the expressions of iconic faces into studies of anatomy and skin tone. Among these are cult film characters and humanitarian heroes he admires, from Scarface to Jesus. If it weren’t for the handwritten quotes and doctrines painted into the background, some of them might be unrecognizable. Read more after the jump.
Jolene Lai returns to Thinkspace Projects with a new collection of eerie paintings. The aptly named "The Beautiful Haunting," starting on Sept. 14, brings her sensibility, seemingly informed by pop mediums and children’s stories to the gallery walls. The painter has a rare ability to evoke the same sense of mystery and danger in settings absent of human occupants. Lai was last featured on our website here.
The chimerical paintings of Yosuke Ueno return in a new show at Thinkspace Projects. “But Beautiful,” kicking off this weekend, features works from the self-taught, Tokyo-based painter that take influence from “everything from Japanese culture, ancient Greek mythology, Tokyo Street fashion and video games to Disney animation and the Western canon of art history.” Ueno was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Over the past few years, many of Ivy Haledeman's intimate paintings have focused on an anthropomorphic female hot dog character. The character bends and lounges across the canvas, often extending most of its form out of our view. While surely offering more erotic themes to extract, Haldedeman’s paintings also seem to be offering reflections on the capitalistic system that produces “hot dogs” themselves.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List