Wedhar Riyadi

Wedhar Riyadi is a rising star of the Indonesian contemporary art scene. He has been very active in recent years, participating in a wide variety of exhibitions, projects, and residencies, but his work has been rarely seen in the United States. He participated for the first time in a New York gallery exhibition, entitled Tales from Wounded-Land, at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in 2009.

Riyadi is part of the generation that came to maturity during the period of upheaval and reform that occurred in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the subsequent fall of the Suharto regime and the transition to democracy in Indonesia. In his art, he explores the psychological depths of pop cultural imagery, creating strange, rather macabre fantasy worlds populated by figures that are at once playful and disturbing.

For Tales from Wounded-Land, he presented a new series of paintings as well as an unusual group of drawings done in colored pencil on black paper. Riyadi is a master of line drawing, and his works show a powerful inspiration from contemporary street art, graffiti and comics.