Haffendi Anuar – Rintangan (Resistance)

Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA) is pleased to announce UK-based Malaysian artist Haffendi Anuar (b. 1985) online solo exhibition. Titled, Rintangan, the exhibition is available for online viewing from 24 August – 24 September 2021 on the RKFA website.

Rintangan showcases a series of drawings by Haffendi, conceived during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK . During this time of isolation, he contemplated the physical, mental, emotional and economic health of the individual and the state. He executed this growing obsession with the concept of physical and metaphorical strength into this series as a coping mechanism towards the pandemic’s bleak uncertainty. He ties the sport of bodybuilding with the act of control over one’s physical capabilities. He considers that the sport allows one to understand and push their physical limitation through corporeal efforts to achieve conventional male beauty. These images were painted onto paper and canvas boards. The figures were made of a mixture of paint, adhesive and sand, squeezed out from ketchup bottles to create the elaborate, bulbous outlines, emphasizing masculine forms. Haffendi then had the composition in cropped frames, suggesting screenshot images, to perceive the focal intent of the viewer’s gaze.

HAFFENDI ANUAR’s (b.1985, Malaysia) current work looks at the kain pelikat, a type of colourful plaid tubular transnational ‘male-skirt’ usually worn domestically and sometimes as an informal labour uniform in parts of the global south. Oriented in relation to his childhood memories of encountering and being enveloped by the fabric, his research and exploration into the iconography of the garment encompasses personal family photos, archival photographs, images from social media and the Internet as well as texts on Malaysia written by colonial writers and looks into the fabric’s origin, social utilization, visual patterns and formal structure. From the materials gathered, he would reimagine the fabric as ‘constructions’ inspired by the structures of hammocks, hanging cradles, nets, curtains/veils and webs, drawing inspiration from man-made and animal-made architecture. He works in a process that combines collage, dyeing, painting, image transfer and sewing and incorporates physical materials such as seashells, pebbles, gutter pipes, brass pipes, rice sacks and chicken feathers into his sculptures, embellishing as well as animating the forms.

Haffendi initially studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence before completing his undergraduate degree in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and an MFA at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, Oxford. Recent exhibitions include Midday Stanza (solo), Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore in 2019; Elephant Utopia (solo), Art Taipei in 2015; A Good Line, A Good Lie (group), A.I., London in 2021; The Foot Beneath the Flower (group), Nanyang Tech University ADM Gallery, Singapore in 2020; For the Few and the Many (2-persons), Beers London, London in 2019; head, heap, heat (group), Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore in 2018 and Powerhouse Commission 2017, Battersea Power Station, London in 2017.

His works are in the collections of the Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood and Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Kuala Lumpur. He lives and works in London, UK and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.