I never really got the chance to know him closely because he was already in his final year when I started my diploma. He was occupied with his diploma show while I was still struggling through drawing assessments at Studio 01.
But I knew of him.
He was one of those seniors whose name circulated quite often around the faculty. Lecturers mentioned him from time to time. Not loudly, but enough for his presence to remain noticeable even before I properly encountered the work itself.
By the time I continued my degree, he was again in his final year.
That was when I began observing his practice more seriously.
At the time, he was producing works on stainless steel instead of the conventional canvas surface. Even then, it already felt slightly unusual. The material carried a different kind of tension.
Cold.
Reflective.
Less forgiving.
The surface itself almost became part of the work’s psychological atmosphere.
The stainless steel works were no longer there.
Instead, he was working on jute surfaces. Large-scale works reaching between six to eight feet each. The surfaces felt rougher, heavier, more physical.
There was a certain aggression within the paintings.
The compositions were messy, layered and dense, but somewhere within that chaos, there were already traces of pop surrealism beginning to appear.
Hybrid creatures.
Chimera-like forms.
Distorted anatomies that felt both playful and unsettling at the same time.
The works did not feel interested in stability.
They felt like things still in the process of mutating.
And perhaps that sense of transformation has always existed within Shafiq’s practice itself.
Looking at his works side by side now, the evolution becomes quite striking.
The earlier works carried a certain roughness to them.
Heavy textures.
Dense surfaces.
The figures almost felt trapped within the material itself. There was an aggressive physicality in the way the works were constructed.
Then came the period of surreal hybrid creatures. The forms became more unstable, less tied to direct representation and more interested in transformation itself.
And now, the recent works feel almost completely different again.
The messy and gritty surfaces have mostly disappeared. In their place are cleaner compositions, sharper outlines, flatter colours and a much more controlled visual language. At first glance, the works almost resemble characters pulled from illustration, toys, or pop visual culture.
But underneath that polished surface, the surrealism never really disappeared.
If anything, it simply became quieter and more refined.
Only now, the chaos feels more controlled.
And perhaps that is what makes Shafiq’s evolution interesting to observe.
Not because he abandoned one style for another, but because his practice seems to continuously negotiate between instinct and refinement, aggression and clarity, messiness and precision.
Even when the visual language changes drastically, the psychological atmosphere remains strangely intact.
I remember him mentioning something interesting during the reception of Pilih dan Pamer. A collector had placed together works from several different phases of his practice: a graduate show piece and one of his recent works.
And surprisingly, some viewers were shocked to discover that there was even a period where Shafiq was not working on canvas at all.
I found that reaction quite interesting.
Because from the outside, people often expect an artist’s career to move in a clean and continuous line. As though an artist simply refines one recognisable style over time.
But practice rarely works that way.
There are interruptions.
Material shifts.
Experiments that temporarily disappear before resurfacing again in another form.
And perhaps that is why seeing different periods of Shafiq’s works side by side feels important.
Because evolution is not simply aesthetic.
It reveals an artist slowly learning how to control his own visual language without losing the strange unpredictability that made the work compelling in the first place.
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