Budi Ubrux

25 Nov Budi Ubrux

BORN: 1968 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

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The artworks of Budi Ubrux are almost immediately recognizable. The figures in this realist painter’s works are almost always draped in newspaper, a style the artist has been doing since the late 1990s. His works are social commentaries of how our reality is shaped by what we read in the media, in particular newspapers. Our knowledge about the newsmakers are often purely from what we read, the real stories often obscured by the sensational headlines and sometimes juicy reporting.

The works of Budi Ubrux allude to the world of information technology, especially the mass media that often hides reality or even does away with it. Things ‘wrapped in paper’, which is a metaphor of untruthful news coverage, disappear in the text; the real issues are dissolved and hidden by the construction of polite and expert words until the facts are reduced to nothing.

(Suwarno Wisetrotomo, Modern Indonesian Art (2nd Ed.), Bali: Koes Artbooks, 2010, p. 324)

While the direct social commentary in most of his pieces may be uniquely Indonesian, the concept of media influence and obscuration is universal. The viewer is often left with ponderous questions about who/what these figures are, what they might be like, and the “reality” beyond the printed visage. The universality of the aesthetics in this artist’s works, coupled with his skillfully executed rendering of the newspaper shrouds covering his subjects, has made Budi Ubrux one of Asia’s rising stars whose works are much sought after.

EXPERIENCE

Awards/Recognitions

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions (Selected)