Restu Taufik Akbar

Restu Taufik Akbar

Artist Bio

Restu Taufik Akbar (born 1990, Bandung) obtained his BFA from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in 2015 with the title Summa Cum Laude, majoring in painting. He works with painting, drawing, video, sculpture and installation. His habit of adventure in nature inspires his works with the theme of the relationship between nature, man and God.

'Lucidity', his first solo exhibition, was held in 2015 at ROH Projects, Jakarta. In 2017, Restu was selected as a finalist for the Bandung Contemporary Art Award #5. In 2018 he held his second and third solo exhibition in Bandung at the Orbital Dago Gallery with the title (IN) MATERIAL TRUTH and at DE BRAGA Hotel by Artotel with the title The Other Hemisphere.

Yes I’m Okay (Fully Charged)

Yes I’m Okay (Fully Charged) began with a sincere gesture of checking up on an old friend in the midst of this pandemic via a video call from my phone. I could immediately feel that positive energy running through my veins as I interacted with him. I realized how important social interactions are to social creatures like us - they recharge.

There are seven layers of rainbow-inspired coloured screens. Colours of the rainbow are believed to be a language for love, happiness, hope and a better life. The hope is to shift the audience’s focus from the conversation as well as the speech partners’ faces in the video to emphasize the positive energy that comes from the abstract-curated video. Aside from the compiled recorded videos, I have created a composition of thumbprints from the individuals that I made contact with. Thumbprints symbolize my personal approvals/checklists as I check up on them and their current condition—It’s like giving them a thumbs-up which represents ‘okay’, or ‘good’.

Hol(y)day

The Hol(y)day series represent an aesthetic experience that I encounter as I explore the world through living. The portrait orientation of 140 x 70 cm, which I applied in these works, represents my phone screen with a ratio of 18:9. My intuition has led my mind in creating such composition as well as the choices of colours. One method is through the use of enamel paint, which perfectly represents harmony and the beauty of nature. This composition has created visuals that resemble the atmosphere of a waterfall in the middle of a forest and it is a call to take a break, to shift us from reality and rest

SELECTED WORKS