작품 상세

The air is fecund with excitement, hope and a gnawing misgiving. A strident red, awash with mellowly light yellow-orange tints pervades with a coy tenderness, gentleness. Such an extraordinary delicious blend achieved by the artist Kow Leong Kiang, best remembered as the Grand Asean Award winner of the Philip Morris regional contemporary art competition in 1998. In the light of a portentous, momentous night like no other night has ever been, in May, on the eve of the dramatic results of the 14th Malaysian general election in 2018 – a political game-changer in the country. There’s glorious hope as symbolised in the nubile lass in baju Melayu, looking askance in a demure coquette play, yet imbued with confidence to face the challenges ahead. The backdrop of lush vegetation and mountains is just as propitious. It’s as if everything is touched by the magical red glint. Seldom do you get a painting of a girl, with the beauty of innocence, in a kampung mileau transformed into a clarion call of a dawning of a New Malaysia. (Kow’s portrait studies of pre-adolescent Malay girls are legion, having scoured the kampung and beaches of Terengganu and Kelantan from 1999 to 2003, to capture the lyrical spirit of the kampung life as a cultural badge). Kow Leong Kiang became the first and only Malaysian to have clinched Southeast Asia’s most prestigious award, the Grand Prize of the Philip Morris Asean Art Award, in the finals in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1998, for his magnum opus, Mr. Foreign Speculator, Stop Damaging Our Country. In 1992, he had won the Major Award in the National Day art competition, and the Minor Award in the Bakat Muda Sezaman, the centrestage of Malaysian young artists (under 30). Art residencies at the Vermont Studio Centre, USA (2004) and Tembi Contemporary in Yogyakarta further honed his skills, while selection for Art Busan, Art Formosa and Art Stage Singapore is proof of his growing regional stature. Educated at the Kuala Lumpur College of Art, graduating in 1991, Kow painted the cover of Ooi Kok Chuen’s novel, MAHSURI A Legend Reborn (2016).