M. Irfan

M. Irfan (b. 1972, in Bukittinggi, Sumatra, Indonesia) currently lives and works in Yogyakarta. He studied metal craft at the Indonesia Institute of Arts (ISI Jogja) and was once a founding member of Kelompok Seni Rupa Jendela (Jendela Art Group). His early paintings, from mid 1990s to mid 2000s, tend to be categorized as either abstract or minimalism. Irfan himself calls that phase of his practice as “painting the essentials”. Not solely limited to painting, he intermittently works with various media, including sculptures, objects, and constructions. 

Another big body of his work experimented with various painting styles such as photorealism, op art, and cerebral formalism. Over the last few years, Irfan has been known for his highly, meticulously detailed depictions of vehicles and infrastructures of transportation (such as railway tracks, locomotives, bridges, roads, airplanes, cars, etc). These two phases of mostly two dimensional practice treat viewers as distanced-subjects that are free to generate their own means and make their own narratives from his works.

He has exhibited extensively in Indonesia, including at the National Gallery in Jakarta and internationally in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Korea, United Kingdom, France, and the United States.