작품 상세

A pet artistic device of Kow Leong Kiang is to place a nubile Malay girl in the middle of an open rural landscape, the innocence and vulnerability of the girl blending with the unblemished natural environs. The girl, often in a kampung setting, is like a flower on the cusp of puberty, facing uncertainties of her future and life. Only this time, Kow uses a band of random colour code emblazoned around the bottom to identify the girl with, in this case, green. Green, purple, yellow, violet, peach, pink, coral or rose… one might be tempted to use symbolic colour cliches for labels or interpretations, but the colour choice is just a lark, a spur of the moment whim. Looking at the girl and her environ, would you agree that green epitomises the mood? The artist painted about five or six pieces of this colour brush strokes series in 2016, for exhibiting in foreign art fairs. Kow Leong Kiang stamped his class when he clinched then Southeast Asia’s most coveted prize, the Grand Prize of the Philip Morris Asean Art Awards, in the finals in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1998, with his work, Mr. Foreign Speculator, Stop Damaging Our Country. Other accolades include the Minor Award in the Young Contemporary Artists (BMS) competition in 1992 and the Major Award in the National Day competition. His art residences include the Vermont Studio Centre, USA (2004) and the Tembi Contemporary in Yogyakarta, and he had featured in Art Busan, Art Formosa, Art Stage Singapore and Art Expo Malaysia. His painting of Mahsuri for the cover of Ooi Kok Chuen’s novel, MAHSURI A Legend Reborn (2016), has been dubbed the Malaysian Mona Lisa. Kow graduated from the Kuala Lumpur College of Art in 1991.