Lot 092
KHOO SUI HOE
b. Kedah, 1939
MAN AND MOON IV, 1989
Signed 'SUI HOE' (lower left)
Acrylic on canvas
118.5cm x 89cm
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Singapore.
ESTIMATE RM 25,000 - 35,000
PRICE REALISED RM 38,500
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Khoo Sui Hoe’s works contain symbolic configurations that correspond to the dreamlike, unconscious state of mind such as the moon and the cloud. Highly emotive, his works are imbued with mysterious qualities portraying his profound interest in primitivism illustrated in a surreal manner. Man and Moon IV is a testimony to Sui Hoe’s ‘escapism’ style of painting – otherworldly and harmonious. His simplistic yet precise rendition of ‘archaic and primitivistic figurations’ is treated with great consciousness – a white silhouette figure and its shadow cast in the background with a crescent moon appearing in the nocturnal sky.
Khoo Sui Hoe is a cult hero in Malaysian art folklore for being one of the earliest who dared to become a full-time artist at a time of a nascent nationhood. He has also helped promote art and other artists first through his Alpha Singapore Gallery, which he set up with a group of artists in 1972, and then singly, the Alpha Utara Gallery in Penang in 2004. He is the spiritual eader of the Utara Group of artists in 1977. After graduating from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art, Singapore in 1961, he studied at Pratt Institute in New York in 1977. He won First Prize (oil category) in the 1965 Malaysian art competition and an Honourable Mention in the Salon Malaysia 1969. His other awards included twice winning the Asian Arts Now Awards given by the Las Vegas Museum in the United States in 2002 and 2004. He was given a retrospective by the Penang State Art Gallery in 2007. He divides his time between the United States and Malaysia mainly in Penang.
REFERENCE
The Painted World of Khoo Sui-Hoe, Khoo Sui-Hoe Retrospective, Penang State Art Gallery, 2007.
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