Abiogenesis: Terhah Landscape by Syaiful Garibaldi

Singapore— Pearl Lam Galleries presents the current repertoire of the budding Indonesian artist Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi, fondly known as Tepu to his friends. Tepu’s art visualises the tiny and often overlooked workings of nature on a large scale, reminding us of the importance of minute life-forms that decompose waste and regenerate new life. In his first solo exhibition outside of Indonesia, Tepu puts on view a varied selection of artworks across diverse mediums, including stylised paintings of microorganisms, spore prints, and installation art pieces involving mushrooms, moss and orchids. His unique reading of life and nature is evident through the quirky use of organic materials in his art practice.

In the midst of the bustling art market, with local and international audiences clamouring for the loud and obvious, Tepu stands out quiet but confident, original and yet aware of the great Indonesian masters before him.

Starting off as a student of agriculture in university, Tepu switched to experimental fine arts and applies his scientific background to create a conceptual foundation for his art. As he peers into his microscope, he records images of cellular growth and uses them as alphabets to create a new language he named “Terhah”, meaning ‘idea’, a project so thorough it came complete with a dictionary. He then progressively expanded and populated his constructed, imaginative world with small organisms which feature in his prints, sketches, paintings and, finally, installation art.