In Jakarta-based illustrator and product designer Redi Adi Pratama’s work, the viewer is immediately hit with a hammer of punk spirit. In each illustration, which are created in Photoshop using a Wacom pen, figurative drawing is rendered through a screen print style – subtly goopy, majorly scatty, these colourful works look like they’re from an alien fanzine for a dystopian nightclub.
His work is rooted in his own coinage: “neo post tresholdism” – an artistic practice which is a combination of various objects Reda encounters in daily life, and the act of merging them with an imaginative, dark narrative. Influenced by sound, Reda uses music to create navigational pathways through his work, creating direction toward an ever expanding visual world, therefore turning his strange creatures and androids into “vessels of sound” – one of his figures is literally a figure fused with a sound system.
These sonic worlds are felt in Reda’s work, presenting a futuristic fusion of dystopian moods and spirituality. Inspired by “fantasy atmospheres”, like those found in trading cards and films like Eternal Family TV, Reda merges the sinister with rhythmic textures inspired by electronic music and a grittiness that is built with a DIY fanzine-inspired love for dots, lines and scratches. “Imperfect textures help me translate internal experiences into visual forms that feel more honest and alive,” says Reda, who somehow makes pixellation look screen printed and digital drawing look like splatters of blow-pens and painterly excess. “It’s a way to recognise human limitations,” says Reda. “We always want to become more, to reach something freer or more ideal, yet there is always a distance that cannot be fully crossed. That is where fantasy exists: as a space to hold hope, small madnesses and desires that are sometimes difficult to express.”