작품 상세

Neat and natty and with evenly rendered and clean brushstrokes! Was this a “new” portrait of Anthonie Chong with a calm and serious demeanour, done in his career-changing e-monk phase, as opposed to earlier darker, heavily textured and even disfigured portraits of himself? The hair is well-combed, the face with youngish features, and the eyes looking ahead determinedly. What it represents and why the portrait is best known to the temperamental artist.Anthonie Chong received his Diploma, majoring in Graphic Design, at the Perak Institute of Art in Ipoh in 1990. He held his first solo at the X Pub and Gallery in Penang in 1994. He won the Malaysian level award in the Philip Morris Asean Art Awards in 1998. In 2000, he switched to caricature-like iconography fusing eastern surrealism with digital technology, and celebrating it with his third solo titled ‘e-monk Art In Town’ at RAP, Kuala Lumpur. Called e-monk which later morphed into @-monk in 2010, and inspired by the ancient Ne-Zha Chinese legend, it has four components e-gen, Community, Gaia and Mechanism. He was to have three more solos after that, one at Town-house Gallery, Kuala Lmpur in 2002, before Naked Perfection at the Singapore Art Museum in 2002, and ‘Anthonie Chong + e.monk’ at Artfolio Gallery in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. He did not hold down any job for long, having worked as an art teacher (Art Design, Kuala Lumpur), graphic designer and illustrator.