Zico Albaiquni

Zico Albaiquni’s (b. 1987, Indonesia) vibrant figurative and landscape paintings play with aspects of Indonesian art history and notions of painterly representation. In particular, he deploys references to various Indonesian traditions such as Mooi Indië (‘beautiful Indies’) painting — a genre of painting capturing romanticised scenes of the Indonesian landscape and its people under Dutch colonial rule. Albaiquni’s unusual and intriguing colour palette developed from the tonal formulas of this early tradition. He also references the links between art, advertising, and the commodification of landscape to investigate contemporary environmental issues in Indonesia. His large-scale works challenge conventional perspectives and formats, often playing with trompe l’oeil illusions and disrupting the rectangular borders of the canvas. In recent paintings, Albaiquni has begun to question the context and operation of painting by incorporating his own studio into his composition, or installing and circulating paintings in public spaces.

Albaiquni holds an MA and BFA from the Institute Technology of Bandung, Indonesia. He has exhibited extensively in Indonesia, as well as in Australia, Italy, France, Austria, Netherlands, Hong Kong and Singapore. He was a finalist of the 2nd Bandung Contemporary Art Award (2012), Soemardja Award (2012), and Asia Award, Tokyo DesignWeek (2015). In 2015, Albaiquni was awarded the Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur (Ministry of Education, Art and Culture, Austria) Residency, resulting in two solo shows in the capital city of Vienna.

His work is collected by the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (Australia), National Gallery of Australia, Singapore Art Museum, Museum MACAN (Indonesia), Bega Valley Regional Gallery (Australia) and the Museum of World Culturesm (the Netherlands).

Zico Albaiquni was one of the participating artists of the exhibition On the Nature of Botanical Gardens (2020) at Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Several new works were especially produced for this exhibition. The work Ruwatan Tanah Air Beta, Reciting Rites in its Sites (2019) by Zico Albaiquni, has been acquired by the Museum of World Cultures where it is currently on permanent display. The work follows the historical Dutch traces in the Botanical garden in Bogor and shows the contemporary appropriation of this area by public groups. In addition, the work reflects on the way in which this history is depicted in the exhibitions of Framer Framed.