Nyoman Masriadi

I Nyoman Masriadi was born in 1973 in Gianyar, Bali. He studied art at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (Institut Seni Indonesia, ISI) in Yogyakarta. Accounts of his time there diverge: one gallery biography states that he graduated, while another account describes him leaving before completing the program. In 1997, while associated with ISI Yogyakarta, he won the Best Painting prize at the school's Dies Natalis celebration.

Masriadi is known for large-scale figurative paintings, typically in acrylic on canvas, that combine muscular, comic-book-derived characters with pointed social and political satire drawn from Indonesian life, sport, and pop culture. His profile grew through solo exhibitions in Indonesia and abroad during the 2000s, culminating in Masriadi: Black Is My Last Weapon, a major survey at the Singapore Art Museum in 2008, organized in partnership with Gajah Gallery and covering roughly a decade of his output. He went on to hold solo exhibitions at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York in 2011 and 2016. He is based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and continues to paint and exhibit.

Masriadi is consistently framed by museums and galleries as a defining voice of Indonesia's post-reformasi art scene, prized for fusing the visual language of comics and action heroes with commentary on masculinity, competition, and Indonesian social and political life. The 2008 Singapore Art Museum survey, and his subsequent New York solo exhibitions at Paul Kasmin Gallery, are the clearest markers of institutional validation beyond the auction room. No independently verifiable, attributed critic quotations from major outlets could be confirmed for this profile.

Masriadi's auction record is The Man From Bantul (The Final Round), sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2008 for a hammer price reported as HKD 7,820,000, or roughly USD 1,000,000 to 1,006,000 depending on the source. The sale is consistently described as a record for contemporary Southeast Asian art at auction and as the first time a living artist from the region sold for more than USD 1 million. Other significant results include Fatman at Christie's inaugural Shanghai sale, reported at USD 757,547, and Attack from Website, reported at USD 935,844 at Christie's Hong Kong on 25 May 2013. He is represented by Gajah Gallery in Singapore. Public auction supply for Masriadi remains modest relative to his prices, so individual results should be read in that light.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Masriadi, and no certificate-of-authenticity program has been identified, so provenance and gallery verification through Gajah Gallery carry extra weight. Public sources disagree on the exact date and precise dollar figure of his 2008 auction record, and on whether he completed his studies at ISI Yogyakarta, so collectors should treat secondary biographical and market claims about him with some caution and confirm details directly with the gallery or auction house of record. His institutional profile, anchored by the 2008 Singapore Art Museum survey and continued gallery representation, is the strongest signal of durability in a market where public auction data points remain relatively few.