작품 상세

Anthonie Chong has become a byword for figures with an unsettling dark, psychology edge at least in the earlier years of his career. A naked woman, rendered in yellow ochres and with busy staccato impastoes on the top half, as if to suggest depth and posture nuances, makes for an interesting reading. Two crimson dots represent the nipple aureoles and although the breasts appear slightly sagging, the face suggests someone fairly young. What is uncanny is a stick-like object where her left arm is propped on, while a plate of unfinished meal lies on the side-table/stool by her bedside. The main figure is slouched diagonally, with furniture stands and the thick body outlines in places complementing as if to keep the slanting figure from tilting. This work is from the same batch from the 1993 work in the Nov 6, 2016 Henry Butcher auction.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.