Page 24 - 57 X 76 - Hanafi • Goenawan Mohamad
P. 24
Here, experimentation is posited not only as a path to (2016), for example, the shape of a mountain can be
the process of creation itself; it is not different from it. clearly identified, as well as thick clouds and blazing
“Experimentation and creation are the same,” Hanafi lava. There are very special moments that encourage
says. In all his experience of painting, Hanafi has him to express ideas in formal language, then choose
never felt that there was a work that ‘failed’. He values to display objects at other moments. Afrizal Malna
painting as the accumulation of authentic moments identified this tendency as a legacy derived from the
in a specific space, the result of a process that cannot ‘animistic aesthetics’ that Hanafi learned from theater
be repeated. director Roedjito.
9
Hanafi has long been known as a painter who likes Hanafi’s openness is also reflected in his long history
to work with broad areas of canvas, with an intense of collaboration with a number of practitioners
washes of pastel or pale colors (often using paint from other disciplines, for example architects (Yori
rollers), and spontaneous line strokes. Indeed, over Antar for JakArt @ 2001; Andra Matin, for a number
more than three decades of work, Hanafi developed of sculpture and landscape projects, including the
non-representational painting styles which later Sukarno statue in Ende, Flores, 2013); writers (Nukila
earned him a reputation as an ‘abstract painter’. Even Amal, for the book Mirah Mini, 2012; Afrizal Malna for
so, anyone who really observes Hanafi will find that the exhibition Javanese Oxygen, 2015 and Javanese
cues, or ‘alerts’, occasionally escape, because some Noise, 2016); painters (Sunaryo, for the Jakarta Art
of Hanafi’s works, also not infrequently, describe Market, 2013), choreographers and dancers (Lim Fei
concrete objects (irons, pins, pencils, needles, Shien and Maxine Happner, 2002), and others. The
baskets, and so forth.) I do not reject these ‘alerts’ of role of his wife, Adinda Luthvianti, is very important
‘abstract painter’ on the figure of Hanafi. But it should in shaping Hanafi’s flexible and diverse work
be added that another peculiarity of Hanafi is in his environment and insight.10
flexible and open artistic temperament. In fact, he
was never too fanatical about the abstraction idiom, 9 Afrizal Malna, “Ujung yang Tersembunyi dalam Gulungannya”,
which merely relied on formal elements such as lines, an essay for the exhibition Biografi Visual: Oksigen Jawa, di Galeri
Soemardja, Bandung, 2015.
spots, and colors. In the painting Wedhus Gembel 10 Malna, ibid.
24
