Adi Indonesia, b. 1974

Educated at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts, Gunawan sculpts his stout, formidable figures in loving embraces, performing yogic postures, or enacting powerful gestures, such as a raised fist. His rotund figures have also been described as challenging existing beauty standards. Exhibited around the world, Gunawan’s work represented Indonesia at the 2008 Olympic Fine Arts Exhibition, where he received an Olympic Torch Award.

In his early days of sculpting, much of Adi's oeuvre focused on the euphoria of animal signification due to his cultural background of growing up amid an agrarian society. This cultural position is the aspect that enabled him to visualize motions, gestures, characters and expressions of various subjects that he sculpts. Today, Adi's sculptures are construed from the delicate relationships between animals and humans, and interhuman relationships.

When he first began sculpting, Adi would produce his works in resin and he would submit the resin form to the casters to have them made in bronze. But after many artistic disasters, Adi was determined that he would cast his bronze by hand and has been doing so ever since. The reason was simply that the casters often missed out on important details that were essential in his works and they didn’t understand the artistic forms and reasons behind it.

Adi's sculptures were featured as Indonesia's representative artworks at the Beijing Olympics 2008 Fine Arts Exhibition, where he has bestowed the further honour of an Olympic Torch Award. His sculptures have also been on display at notable exhibitions in several galleries and art fairs around the world.