작품 상세

In full flush of Baconesque splatters, Anthonie Chong creates solitary avuncular forms in garish chrome or peachy reddish-brown hues that meld walls, objects and subject in a squishy lather. The play of pigments is more than just a camouflage of the original intent, but an expressionist splurge, with a certain aggro if not anger. Yet, the figure is not moving or in action, but sedated like in a Xanadu state, raising a toast to himself perhaps, to the whole ludricity of the situation. It’s a personal mirror, within four walls, and a lark and a laugh.These gestural splurges were done after Anthonie Chong graduated from the Perak Institute of Art with a Diploma in Graphic Design in Ipoh in 1990, and before he staged his first solo, at the X Pub and Gallery in Penang in 1994. When he won the Malaysian level award in the Philip Morris Asean Art Awards in 1998, it was a time of awkward figures in bland, ordinary situations. 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. Three more solos followed, namely one at Town-house Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (2002), Naked Perfection at the Singapore Art Museum (2002), and ‘Anthony Chong + e.monk’ at Artfolio in Kuala Lumpur (2009). He had worked as an art teacher (Art Design, Kuala Lumpur), graphic designer, illustrator, otherwise helping out in a relative’s business.