Jakarta, IO – Ferdy Thaeras is best-known as a model, actor, and editor, and was once a finalist on MTV’s VJ Hunt in 2005. However, his passion for art has always remained strong, since he first studied fine arts at the Jakarta Art Institute. Ferdy Thaeras loves the world of abstract painting, and considers it a journey and a delicate process he experienced living in different places, from Jakarta and Bali to New York.
In early 2022, Ferdy lived in New York City for six months and returned to Indonesia to hold his first solo exhibition of abstract paintings at the Indonesian Francais Institute (IFI) Yogyakarta. The exhibition started on December 23, 2022 and ran to January 14, 2023. This exhibition involved curator Joned Suryatmoko, whom he met in New York City. The exhibition presents a theatrical script, “Les Bonnes,” meaning “The Servant” by French writer Jean Genet.
“Les Bonnes” tells the story of Solange and Claire, two women working as waitresses for a wealthy employer, known only as “Madame”, set in 1930s Paris. This script is mainly a role play, allowing anyone to be whoever one wants to be as long as one can play the character represented in the script.
For the Les Bonnes series exhibition, Ferdy Thaeras created ten paintings: three for Saint Marks, three for the Paradox, five for the Enigma, two for the Nexus, one for the Protagonist, and one for the Before The Beginning series. Four paintings of the Survivor series consist of three pieces of artwork on cotton cloth and one piece of the canvas without a spanram. A total of 25 framed paintings and four cloth works are presented through the performance of choreographer Fitri Setyaningsih.