SYAIFUL GARIBALDI

Pearl Lam Galleries presents the current repertoire of the budding Indonesian artist Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi, fondly known as Tepu to his friends. Tepu’s art visualises the tiny and often overlooked workings of nature on a large scale, reminding us of the importance of minute life-forms that decompose waste and regenerate new life. In his first solo exhibition outside of Indonesia, Tepu puts on view a varied selection of artworks across diverse mediums, including stylised paintings of microorganisms, spore prints, and installation art pieces involving mushrooms, moss and orchids. His unique reading of life and nature is evident through the quirky use of organic materials in his art practice.

In the midst of the bustling art market, with local and international audiences clamouring for the loud and obvious, Tepu stands out quiet but confident, original and yet aware of the great Indonesian masters before him.

Starting off as a student of agriculture in university, Tepu switched to experimental fine arts and applies his scientific background to create a conceptual foundation for his art. As he peers into his microscope, he records images of cellular growth and uses them as alphabets to create a new language he named “Terhah”, meaning ‘idea’, a project so thorough it came complete with a dictionary. He then progressively expanded and populated his constructed, imaginative world with small organisms which feature in his prints, sketches, paintings and, finally, installation art.
Essays contributed by Enin Supriyanto, one of Indonesia's leading independent curators and Tan Siuli, Assistant Director (Programmes) and Curator at the Singapore Art Museum, illuminates the discursive nature of Tepu’s creations. Supriyanto writes, “Tepu enforces the notion that as material, fungi—or more importantly: new media artistic expressions—are directly related to the need for new languages”. Tan supports this point, as she writes: “Like the thread-like body of the fungus which appears to have no beginning and no end, only an ever-expanding network of nodes and connections—the possibilities for a constantly evolving and enquiring art-making process, nourished by its interdisciplinary conjunctions and modalities—are infinite indeed.”

The upcoming exhibition at Pearl Lam Galleries serves as an arena for Tepu to further introduce and make tangible the fascinating world of Terhah.