There is always a tendency to label artists. I guess that is the curse of a curator or even art historian.
To place them within a category so the work feels easier to understand. It gives us a way in. A framework. Something to hold on to.
But sometimes the work doesn’t sit comfortably in one place.
Firdauz Baharudin, or more commonly known as Seburba, feels like one of those cases.
When I look at his works, there is an immediate sense of playfulness. Bright colours. Exaggerated forms. Almost cartoon-like at first glance. The kind of visual language that feels accessible, even familiar.
But the longer you sit with the work, the more unstable it becomes.
The forms don’t fully settle into anything recognisable. They shift. Between creature, object and abstraction. At times it feels like you are looking at something in the middle of becoming but it never fully arrives.
That in-between state is where the work starts to hold.
There is a tendency to read works like this through the lens of pop surrealism.
In the Malaysian context, Badrolhisham Mohamad Tahir has previously framed artists like Shafiq Nordin and Nik Shazmie within that category. And if we follow that line of thinking, it wouldn’t be too far off to extend that reading toward artists like Seburba and even Syukur Rani.
On the surface, the similarities are there.
Bold colours. Graphic clarity. A visual language that borrows from pop culture and illustration. Alongside that, there is also a sense of distortion. Forms that stretch, melt and reconfigure themselves in ways that don’t quite follow logic.
But what makes Seburba’s work slightly different is where the focus sits.
Where some pop surrealist works lean toward character and narrative, Seburba feels less interested in telling a story. His works are more fluid. Less about who or what the figure is and more about what the form is doing.
Movement. Transition. Instability.
The compositions feel active, almost restless. Elements fold into each other. Shapes collide, expand and dissolve. There is no clear hierarchy. No single focal point that holds everything together.
Instead, the eye keeps moving.
And maybe that is where the work becomes interesting.
Because while it is easy to read the works as playful, there is also something slightly uncomfortable about them. Not in an obvious way, but in how they refuse to settle. The familiarity of cartoon-like visuals is there, but it is constantly disrupted by forms that feel off, stretched, or unresolved.
Reading the works as pop surrealism makes sense. But at the same time, it also feels insufficient.
Because the works don’t feel like they are trying to belong to that category.
If anything, they feel more instinctive.
Less concerned with fitting into a defined movement and more focused on responding to the act of making itself. The gestures. The flow. The decisions that happen in the moment.
So maybe calling it pop surrealism is both accurate and not enough.
It gives us a way to enter the work.
But it doesn’t fully contain it.
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