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As Indonesian contemporary art continues to make inroads into the global market, local investors are increasingly paying attention to what the country’s artists have to offer. With an eye to both supporting the booming art scene and sharing in its profits, financial players are now luring artists out of their workshops and welcoming them into the halls of economic opportunity.

Ciptadana, a major financial services company, has joined the move to forge closer links with Indonesia’s top artists by commissioning a set of 12 works by Yogyakarta painter Hanafi for its 2012 calendar. The 12 abstract paintings will be on display for the rest of the month at Ciptadana’s art space in its South Jakarta office.

The works for the calendar feature overlapping washes of color set at asymmetrical angles, sliced through with scratched lines, scribbled text and non-figurative shapes and shadows. The colors range from murky browns to sunset yellows, algae greens and vivid reds, recalling the shifting shades of the polluted Jakarta skyline.

With titles like “Senja Merah” (“Red Dusk”), “Awal Mula” (“The Beginning”) and “Batas Langit” (“Sky Limit”), the paintings convey a dreamlike sensation of trying to make sense of half-formed thoughts or ideas.

In introducing the works, Bali-based art expert Jean Couteau advised viewers to approach Hanafi’s paintings with a tranquil mind-set.

“To be able to feel the intensity of Hanafi’s work, one should reach a state of hening first,” he said, using an Indonesian expression. “It means, in English, quietness, stillness, spirituality.”

Originally from France, Couteau has lived in Indonesia for nearly 30 years. He has devoted much of his time here to writing about the country’s fine arts and holds a doctorate in Balinese iconography.

Couteau believes that Hanafi is one of the most important abstract artists working in the country today. “Hanafi is Indonesian. His abstraction is not that of Westerners,” he said. “But it is not that of Indonesians either.”

The Western historical canon of abstract art, Couteau explained, has its roots in the 19th century, when Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky began to experiment with the musicality of form and color.

In contrast, he said, most Indonesian abstract artists try to refer to popular symbols in their work, or create their own system of symbols to convey a certain message.

But not Hanafi.

“Hanafi doesn’t really refer to anything,” Couteau said. “He has, as he put it, no designs. He expects the unexpected to come up, as if by accident, and imagines the unexpected through his feeling.”

Born in 1960 in Purworejo, Central Java, Hanafi studied painting at the Indonesian School of Fine Arts in Yogyakarta in the late 1970s. After moving to Jakarta in the 1990s, he steadily built a name for himself on the national art scene, exhibiting works at major galleries across Java and in Bali.

Hanafi now lives with his family in Depok, where he runs an artists’ workshop. With his artworks now fetching hundreds of millions of rupiah (tens of thousands of dollars) apiece, he can fully devote his time to his craft.

Couteau told viewers at the opening that while Hanafi’s work may be enigmatic, due to its abstract forms and lopsided compositions, it should also be seen as something approachable, requiring only an open mind and a sensitive heart to comprehend it. Viewers, he said, should be less concerned with what message Hanafi is trying to convey, and more open to the feelings expressed by the painter on his canvas.

“What I have to say in my paintings usually comes upon me unexpectedly, just like a gift,” Hanafi said. “This cannot be prepared, but once it is there, it is a moment of happiness, which I feel I have to share with others.”

“If I had a design,” he added, “What I expected would probably never take place.”

2012 Ciptadana Art Program Until Dec. 30 
Ciptadana Securities, Plaza ASIA Office Park Unit 2,
Jl. Jend. Sudirman Kav. 59, South Jakarta
Tel. 021 2557 4800 (ext. 743)