Haffendi Anuar – Bakat Muda Sezaman 2019

Working with found objects, images and materials, I create sculptures, paintings, drawings and installations that look into our relationship with the city, landscapes and various environments, whether physical or digital. The expanded notion of the landscape in the 21st century informs my practice, and I am interested in linking this to the tradition and history of sculpture, looking how the object, either monumental or humble, could magnify our understanding of the larger environment, like how objects and images displayed in an ethnographic museum give an impression of a time long gone. In a way, working and manipulating everyday substances and materials sourced from my immediate environment, such as the city streets, night markets and corner shops around my studio in Kuala Lumpur is an attempt to pull out something from these objects and environments, something of an ‘essence’ that exemplifies the current times or indications of the future. The term ‘landscape’ is also a fluid notion to me, other than physical, it could be cerebral or atmospheric.

For the work “Member-member”, I wanted to move away from creating autonomous objects but instead an environment housing a collection of sculptures. The work looks at the city-scape of Kuala Lumpur now as a starting point, pulling the colours, textures, sheens and feel of the city into a space abstracted by forms. I want to make the space feels like it could be both physical and digital, natural and man-made with organic forms and geometric design covered merging into each other. The collection of objects have a sense of a shared relationship with each other as well as with the audience as they move around the exhibition space. I want the audiences’ senses to be heightened when exploring the objects and the space.