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Agus Baqul Purnomo sees flowers a little differently than everyone else, or at least it comes across that way in his paintings.

As an artist, he sees flowers as objects of beauty, full of richness and born of a nuance of colors and compositions, not fragile details born of petals, sepals, pistils and stems.

For his new exhibition, “Secret Garden,” which is currently running at the Vivi Yip Gallery in Warung Buncit, South Jakarta, Agus uses the flower as an inspirational jumping-off point, and then lets his colors do the rest.

He mixes thick layers of vibrant oil paints, a technique known as impasto, and applies repetitive but undirected brush strokes in the shapes of numbers, which turns the chaotic parade into a lively burst of colors.

“Though his abstraction of numbers, [Agus] frees these flowers from the visual order enforced by aesthetic tendencies in both painting and gardening,” says Kadek Adidharma, the exhibition’s curator.

Kadek describes the exhibition, which runs until Feb. 20, as a tropical garden left untended for a week during the rainy season.

“There is some semblance of order, or structure, but the frenetic energy of life, in search of light and space, has taken over,” he says. “Above any idea of structure there is a seething mass of motion, rhythm and light converging on the edge of chaos.

“Agus celebrates the energy of life that exists with the plants themselves.”

Agus, who graduated from the Indonesian Institute of Art in Yogyakarta, has created 12 paintings inspired by flowers, including roses, water lilies and dahlias. Each painting took the 34-year-old between one and two days to finish.

Through his paintings, Agus asks his audience to expand the horizon of their imaginations when it comes to enjoying the artistic beauty of a flower.

He says that when looking at his floral art, people might ask questions like, “Why is a flower drawn like this? Is there a secret behind it?” Which, he says, leads to the title of the exhibition.

Born in Kendal, Central Java, on Aug. 19, 1975, Agus has taken part in a number of group exhibitions since he entered the international art scene in 1998. His work has been exhibited across the globe, including in Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and the United States.

But it wasn’t until March 2007 that the Yogyakarta-based artist began experimenting with the world of abstract impressionism, in particular with drawing the shapes of numbers with his brush strokes.

“Secret Garden” is his fifth solo exhibition and a follow-up to his first international solo exhibition, “Recite!/Iqra’!” held in Kuala Lumpur last year.

“When you draw numbers with brush strokes on a canvas repeatedly, with one number on top of another and with different colors, it is very artistically beautiful,” Agus says.

Numbers are a significant part of human life, and it would be unfortunate if numbers were not poured into a piece of art to create an alternative perspective, he says.

Prior to his latest exhibition, Agus explored the effect of number-inspired brush strokes on other naturally occurring phenomenon like rainbows and the Big Bang.

“Nature is everything in human life,” Agus says. “But for a painter like me, nature is not just a mere object of exploitation, it’s is a source of inspiration.”

Whatever the subject of his painting, whether a flower, a mountain or the beginning of the universe, Agus knows only one way to express himself.

“In abstract painting, I find the elements of freedom, spontaneity and curiosity that can’t be achieved through other methods, even if it may look random to most viewers,” he says.