First published: September 2025
In Fika Leon’s paintings, toothy figures dance and careen over a Pop palette backdrop layered with the legend, ritual and socio-cultural past of Indonesia
Fika Leon’s real name is Fika Arestya Sultan. The “Leon” is an homage to his eponymous son, whom the artist credits as the impetus behind his painting practice. Fika Leon lives and works in Yogyakarta, a city in the south-central area of the Indonesian island of Java. Recently exhibited in international venues including in Miami, Los Angeles and Dubai, his art often depicts crazed, mask-bedaubed, shadowy creatures, wrapped in a dance-like cast, painted with expressive impasto skeins and strokes. He uses acrylic, enamel and silicone paint, layering varicoloured strips. To the Western eye, the work, with its centred, beaming or howling faces created in animated crimson, azure and hoary-white overlaid brushstrokes, may be redolent of US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s frenetic, neo-Expressionist dashes and daubs of the 1980s. In fact, Leon and other Indonesian artists of his generation are foregrounded by the complex legacy of nationalistic Modernist artist groups that formed during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia from 1942 to 1945.
King, 2020, 53 x 53 in. / 134.5 x 134.5 cm
By EKIN ERKAN
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision 124.
