SANS☒

The nature of representation is inherently flawed. Ideological and innately restrictive, the meaning of any given representation is never definitive as the gap between intention and realization, original and copy, can never be bridged.

Irfan Hendrian’s SANS☒ explores the expansive potential of non-representational aesthetics and thinking strategies. The artist’s non-objective practice operates beyond the finite nature of representation, extending the possibilities of perceptual and imaginative experiences. In this exhibition, “SANS” (literally, without) followed by the symbol “☒” is used to describe an absence of representation.

Within the space opened up by the absence of signs – things that "stand for" or "take the place of" something else – Hendrian presents us with a particular aesthetic experience; foreign and strange, but equally playful. In these eccentrically coloured, painstakingly constructed forms, Hendrian draws us into a peculiar imaginary space, releasing us from the rules of representation into a state of perceptual ‘tabula rasa’.