Jumaldi Alfi - "Night Swimmer", Solo exhibition Metis-NL Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Recapturing the traditions within Jumaldi Alfi's previous works, the series of paintings for his solo show "Night Swimmer" generally materialized from questions revolving around ambiguity, paradox, restlessness and the battle of thoughts in mapping out the quest of soul balancing. Using various familiar icons such as the cactus, stones, the skull, and references to ancient Greek mythology - in particular the characters of Sisyphos and Achilles - Alfi is trying to mix and match his own traditional roots of the Minangkabau, West Sumatra, as a language of expression in responding to the contemporary situation. His works are ubiquitously personal, since he firmly believes that for us to recognize "the other" it takes to acknowledge the local or as he puts it "the insiders." This show will be curated by Astrid Honold, director of OFFICE for Contemporary Art.