Coastalvision: Heavily-saturated Tropicaliá

Collage was the main element in Ardneks’ early works — the use of photography, still pictures, and drawings, although a similar color palette can still be found in his recent works. It seems that with gaining more trust from the local music scene, he also gained more confidence in experimenting and exploring his own unique style: more illustrations rather than collages. In a way, more freedom and more personal artworks. He uses his ‘canvas’ just like how he composes his music that is riddled with French new wave cinema references, a mesh of genres and lyrics that can be very niche, nonsensical mishmash of words, jargons in different languages from Japanese to Javanese, and also, an important detail of Ardneks’ works is how he engages with religious deities and symbols. Ardneks’ cross-cultural references were inspired and perhaps enabled by being brought up in an open-minded family. His family is open enough for Kendra to explore and understand Islam (including Sufism), Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism (hence his surname, Ahimsa). A case that is uncommon in families throughout Indonesia. Although it is a country with the largest Muslim population, Indonesia is also a vast archipelago with huge cultural and ethnic diversity; and Ardneks uniquely captures this dynamic through his works.

COASTALVISION: Heavily-saturated Tropicália is Jordan, jordan Édition’s first attempt to publish a pure artist’s monograph, featuring the artistic journey of the outsider artist, Kendra Ahimsa aka Ardneks from as far back as 2011 to today. The more-than-a-decade-long journey is presented through a series of interviews between Ardneks and radio announcers from around the globe, blending reality, fantasy, and candid nostalgia; just like Ardneks’ works of art.

Ardneks’ body of work is known for its importance in arousing enthusiasm for local concert poster artworks in 2008 – which has attracted the attention of internationally acclaimed bands. Recently, Ardneks has worked with Lollapalooza, Toro y Moi, Japanese Breakfast, Khruang Bin, New York Times, LA Times, Desert Daze, NANG Magazine, and more.