artcommune | Wong Keen

Wong Keen

b. 1942, Singapore -

Wong Keen grew up in a Chinese literati environment and was an acclaimed teenage painter in the early Singapore art scene before leaving at 19 to study at the prestigious Art Students League of New York. He was the first Singaporean and among the earliest of Chinese artists to venture into the flourished post-war American art scene – then the most avant-garde art center in the world.

Having spent over 50 years in America, Wong Keen’s outstanding oeuvre, which encompasses oil, ink, acrylic, and collage since the 1960s to the present, is a powerful embodiment of the elegant expressivity of Chinese ink wash aesthetics and the Western inventive approach toward form and colour. From series to series, whether venturing anew or revisiting familiar techniques and imagery, his relentless pursuit of compositional innovation, together with the enigmatic quality of his language, has given rise to a unique body of work that defies traditions and categorisation. In 2007, the Singapore Art Museum celebrated Wong Keen’s masterful repertoire with the solo exhibition, Wong Keen: A Singapore Abstract Expressionist. Wong Keen’s work is held in a number of private and public collections, including the National Museum of China, Minnesota State University Art Museum, Albright Knox Art Gallery, New York, Singapore Art Museum, Resorts World Sentosa and the Fullerton Hotel.

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