Bahasa Faisal Habibi
Faisal Habibi first came to prominence as part of the ‘Bandung wave’ of the late 2000s. Bandung artists are typically characterised as academically and conceptually oriented, due in part to the abiding perception of the Bandung Institute of Technology as a ‘laboratory of the West’. As reductive as this perception may be, there is a philosophical sophistication to Habibi’s playful sculptural investigations of material culture.
Habibi has been described as an exponent of ‘object art’, a creator of three-dimensional forms that operate as sculpture, but which are distinct from its traditions. Like his Bandung contemporaries Tromarama and Wiyoga Muhardanto, he highlights the vast prevalence of mass-produced forms in daily life. Habibi incorporates into his work the aesthetics of industrial design and the idea of commodities as objects of desire, taking on a life of their own in the mind of the consumer. Questions of utility pervade his early works—articulated shovels, a self-nailing hammer, and impossibly overcomplicated brushes and handsaws exaggerate the function of simple tools. He has also produced a range of beautifully realised but hopelessly unusable deconstructions of furniture design that play on perception and expectation.
In the past few years, Habibi’s attention has shifted toward the more sensuous aspects of everyday objects, with a focus on materiality, colour and form. His recent works are still recognisably derived from commonplace products—plywood veneer panels, painted stainless steel tubing, rubber stoppers, blades of various shapes and applications—but they are altogether devoid of function. By focusing on their aesthetic elements, Habibi creates space for reflection, in keeping with his fascination with the relationship between subjects and objects, between human beings and the things around them.
The Mind the gap series 2015–17 is an installation of three works created from the metal bits and pieces left behind when a desired shape is cut from a sheet of steel. Its centrepiece is an arrangement of 100 offcuts on a wall, placed in a loose rectangular grid. Their dark rusty tone emphasises the contrasting colour of the wall, and thus the forms of the spaces between them. While Habibi’s configuration of the steel pieces creates the impression of negative space in the gallery, the industrial detritus are already negative space themselves. Mind the gap 2015, then, is effectively a double negative, a playful reordering of a traditional category of sculpture and design.
Reuben Keehan
