Lot Essay
"The painter's imagery is like an epigrammatic metaphor, laced with ironic wit. In fact, the reason Kiukok's imagery - no matter how grosteque it may be - does not offend, even when it overturns over perception of things, is that it is wholly cerebral. To him, bodies are more interesting when bare of flesh, revealing the underlying structure form; for the same reason, the white skeleton of fish are more dramatic subjects than the fish alive, with their soft covering of flesh. "I want to be able to see underneath the skin," he says. (Esperanza Bunag Gatbonton, The Private World of Ang Kiu Kok). Indeed the critic has aptly summed up the single preoccupation of the Filipino artist; and Ang has used Cubism as his tool to articulate his vision of the material world pictorially.
While cubist tendencies remain as the fundamentals for Ang, the partial abstraction, multiplication and dissolution of objects, and the greater perception of depth and space which is brought on by the changing orientation of different planes are very much his own creations, conditioned and formulated by his life experiences and personal preferences. In the present lot, one sees the flexible treatment of the subject matter, with the seemingly ad hoc fragmentation and reduction, the table's affinity to any real-life table becomes almost incidental.
While cubist tendencies remain as the fundamentals for Ang, the partial abstraction, multiplication and dissolution of objects, and the greater perception of depth and space which is brought on by the changing orientation of different planes are very much his own creations, conditioned and formulated by his life experiences and personal preferences. In the present lot, one sees the flexible treatment of the subject matter, with the seemingly ad hoc fragmentation and reduction, the table's affinity to any real-life table becomes almost incidental.