Wong Keen

Wong Keen (, born 23 November 1942) is a Singaporean painter who was primarily trained in New York. He is known for being one of the first Singaporean artists to be educated in the United States and for his syncretic body of work that melds together the sensibilities of Chinese literati painting and the New York School. His practice, unusual for his generation, has led to him being described as "Singapore's first abstract expressionist". From 1969 to 1996, Wong also founded and operated Keen Gallery in New York, a framing studio and exhibition space.

Wong's preferred media reflects his diverse aesthetic inheritance and includes oil paint, Chinese ink and colour, acrylic paint, and collage, executed on canvas, archival paper, and rice paper. Preferring to work with the same subject matter over long periods of time, Wong's oeuvre has often been categorised serially, with his paintings of nudes, lotuses, and flesh being particularly prominent.

Wong Keen's practice is currently based in Singapore.

Early life (1942–1961)

Family Wong Keen was born in the first year of the Japanese Occupation, the second child of Wong Chennan and Chu Hen-Ai . Both were teachers, at the Chinese High School and the Nanyang Girls' High School respectively. The family resided at the Chinese High School Teachers' Quarters, part of a social circle that included pioneer artists such as Chen Wen Hsi, Liu Kang, Cheong Soo Pieng, and Chen Chong Swee, all of whom taught at the Chinese High School during Wong's formative years.

Both Wong sr. and Chu practiced Chinese calligraphy, and can be classified among the literati calligraphers of early Singapore. These calligraphers inherited the aesthetic sense of amateurism (as opposed to the professionalism of court painters) of dynastic Chinese scholar-officials, favouring spontaneity and an affinity for literature and belle lettres. Chu was especially serious in this pursuit, participating in many group exhibitions and even holding her own solo exhibition in 1997. This familial setting would have an enduring influence on Wong; his early New York days would be marked by explorations into calligraphic aesthetics, and he would produce collages that fragmented and reassembled his mother's calligraphy throughout his career.

The Chinese High School shared many of its art teachers with the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) at this time and was an important incubator of young artistic talents. Departing from the earlier pedagogical directions of Richard Walker, who served as Art Superintendent Singapore Schools before the War, the Chinese High School's art education was grounded in modernism (particularly the School of Paris). The resources and emphasis the Chinese High School placed on art education was exceptional among schools in Singapore. Among its students that later took on a career in the fine arts were Ho Ho Ying and Goh Beng Kwan, both of whom were childhood friends of Wong.

Wong enrolled in the Chinese High School from 1955-56.

Learning to paint

Impressed by her son's sketches of figures in magazines, Chu arranged for Wong to take drawing lessons from family friend Liu Kang. Wong was then aged around 10-11. Between 1957 and 1961, Wong was a regular visitor to 5 Kingsmead Road, together with a group of friends that included Goh Beng Kwan. Wong worked on the in-situ mural Chen designed for his residence.

Wong's early practice was influenced by the Nanyang School, as refracted through Chen. Specifically, Wong inherited Chen's emphasis on cubist and fauvist ideas. This aesthetic direction is especially obvious in the oil painting Bicycle (1959), "demonstrating the teenager's interest in the cubist fragmentation of a flat pictorial plane and stark angular forms". These exhibitions were juried by the leading Singaporean artists such as Ho Kok Hoe, Georgette Chen, and Cheong Soo Pieng, and were one of the main venues through which aspiring artists established themselves.

His first major commission came in 1960, to paint a mural for the Lido Cinema on Orchard Road, operated by the Shaw Brothers. This exhibition, held at the National Library from July 1–5 (with an extended day), Lee purchased the most expensive painting on display at $700. Chen Wen Hsi wrote that "within my current students there are many with a talent for painting and a bright future. Wong Keen, who will shortly depart for his overseas studies, is exceptional within this group." This departure from Parisian modernism (which heavily influenced the Nanyang School) was a major factor in Wong Keen's shift away from his previous practice.

The Art Students League, which Wong Keen enrolled in from 1961-1966, played a significant part in educating a new generation of artists working with recourse to abstract expressionism. Wong enrolled in the Life Drawing, Painting and Composition course instructed by faculty members Morris Kantor, Vaclav Vytlacil, and Sidney Gross over the period 1961-1965. The course required Wong to dedicate 3.5 hours a day, 5 days a week. Following the award of the League's Ford Foundation tuition scholarship in 1964, which covered the cost of one course of his choice, he was able to concentrate more on his practice. Part of Wong's study was outside of his curriculum at the League, as he sought out, interacted with, and gained insights from pioneering abstract expressionist artists such as Hans Hofmann and Theodoros Stamos. He visited the night classes of Theodoros Stamos on several occasions where they conversed on the subject of art and painting.

Of note among the various art forms that Wong acquainted himself with was the relatively young style of colour field painting. The painter Hans Hoffman, who was a champion of colour field painting, interacted with Wong through the League. He was also one of very few artists of Chinese origin based in New York at that time.

Solo shows (1963–1965) Wong produced a significant body of work as a student. He was reported in the New York World Telegram and Sun as having "painted almost 200 pictures since his arrival here a year ago". These works would form the basis of two solo exhibitions held in New York.

Wong's second solo exhibition was held at New York's Bridge Gallery from 9–27 April 1963, perhaps the first solo exhibition a Singaporean staged in New York. The Nanyang Siang Pau reports that "Wong Keen exhibits 25 large-scale oil paintings, the largest of which were 8 x 6 feet, the smallest of which was 4 x 3 feet, and 30 ink paintings, all completed in America." thumb leftHis next solo exhibition was held from 27 Feb-18 Mar 1965, at Westerly Gallery shortly after he was awarded the Ford Foundation tuition scholarship. The works in this exhibition seemed to have made an impact in the way Wong's practice stood between Chinese aesthetic influences and Western modernism. Sidney Gross commented that "Wong was one of a group of talented painters here [New York] trying to assimilate many Western ideas without losing their own identity." The scholarship required Wong to undertake a part of his studies in Paris and other European countries, and carried the stipend of $3,000 per annum.

Before his travels, Wong was invited to deliver a lecture on Chinese painting and to stage a solo exhibition of his ink paintings at Fordham University, New York. In his stay, he executed a series of ink paintings that elaborated on the abstract ink expressions he developed in New York, but with a greater emphasis on the white space compositional device of Bada Shanren.

The works produced in Europe garnered interest in the Western art world, resulting in three solo exhibitions: St. Martin's School of Art (1966, at the request of Principal Edward J. Morss), Sarah Lawrence College, New York (1967), and The Art Students League, New York (1967). Western media seemed more interested in his ink paintings:"In this show [at the Art Students League], the paintings, ink-wash drawings and scrolls with Chinese calligraphy were in part produced during the time he spent in England. Although his art is more western than eastern in basic direction, a number suggest both the influence of the modern Chinese painter Chi Pai Shi [ Qi Baishi] and the Ching dynasty painter Zhu Ta [Zhu Da, a.k.a. Bada Shanren]." Wong Keen returned to New York in 1966 and graduated in the same year. thumb

One of Wong's most important series of works—the nude—started to become part of Wong's practice around 1962. Commenting on a representative work of the period, Arms Stretching (1963), Ma Peiyi observes through the circular structuring of Wong's nude forms his attempt in engaging more stylistically with the shape of his subjects "without compromising on [their] basic anatomical proportions." In his ink paintings, Wong sought out a midway between two traditions, much as commentators have often recognised in the newspapers. Roy Moyer commented that "when he arrived in New York in 1961 to study at the Art Students League, he was quite comfortable with abstract expressionist art, since there is nothing more abstract than those Chinese calligraphic ideograms which he knew so well." Lotuses would enter Wong's oeuvre in this period, producing semi-abstract ink paintings such as Lotus (1965), providing Wong a vehicle through which he may more intuitively explore the relationship between Chinese ink painting and Western modernism. Wong would develop his intrigues into Chinese ink gestures and expressions further in a series of nude paintings (of a model named Susie), executed with oil on paper in the Chinese freehand style.

Making a living (1967–1996)

Keen Gallery (1969–1996) After his two solo exhibitions in 1967, Wong found a job as Art Director at the Police Athlete League, New York. He worked in the job until 1969, setting up Keen Framing Gallery in 1969. This allowed him to continue working on his own practice while keeping in touch with the wider art world. His framing services were popular, garnering clients such as the Museum of Modern Art, Time Magazine, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Macy's. He was known for his artisan framing services, providing framing design with artistic sensibilities. Keen Gallery also hosted a reading of poems by Pang-cheng Peng and the play Prism View by Joe Fox. Perhaps the most important exhibition put up by Keen Gallery was Red Star Over China: Tenuous Peace, held from 5 May - 5 June 1993. The group show featured artworks by artists Liu Xiaodong, Cha Li, Chen Xiaohong, Hao Zhiqiang, Hou Wenyi, Lin Lin, Ma Kelu, Ni Jun, Xia Baoyuan, Yu Hong, Zhang Zeping, Zhao Bandi, and Zheng Dasheng. The artists were largely young Chinese contemporary artists, some of whom were the first generation to base themselves overseas after the Cultural Revolution. The exhibition was one of the earlier showings of Chinese contemporary art in the United States.

In his time operating Keen Gallery, Wong formed a friendship with the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Taiwanese-American artist C. J. Yao, and the Chinese violinist Xu Weiling. They would meet almost every week in the 1980s.

Among Wong's output in this period, two distinct series of works emerged: the Torso and the Caesura series. A review of the exhibition remarked that "Wong Keen's recent works were mostly based on the human form; with twisted brushstrokes he retained his usual abstract style." The Torso series resulted as an elaboration of this earlier series of nudes exhibited in Taiwan, executed mainly between 1986-1996, with the important introduction of paper collage techniques (reminiscent of paper collé) that further flattened parts of the nude composition. Wong's use of acrylic paint was unusual in how it referenced the fluidity of ink in Chinese paintings. This series formed perhaps Wong's clearest repudiation and redefinition of the traditional inspirations and cultural moulds that shaped his practice, as Kwok and Ong have written: "Caesura works on the theme of destruction and rebirth. These works combine scraps of traditional Chinese prints and calligraphy on paper, juxtaposed with ink washes and acrylic shapes. In this manner, traditional Chinese art is fragmented and remade into new forms." Although most of his practice was still based in the United States, where he continued to hold exhibitions, he began to reconnect with the Singaporean art world and his old friends. As recounted by Wong: "I had been trying to come back (to exhibit) for years... I still have a fascination with Singapore. I come back to visit whenever I have the chance."

In 1995, Wong planned to hold an exhibition of Singaporean artists in Keen Gallery to increase the Singaporean presence in the New York art world. He found that "working there [New York] as part of a small group of Singaporean painters can be quite lonely sometimes". Though the exhibition was reported in the newspapers, it did not materialise due to a lack of funds.

Wong decided to close down Keen Gallery and formally base part of his practice in Singapore in 1996. The 1996 exhibition garnered much media attention and worked well to reintroduce Wong to the Singaporean art world that developed in his absence. Relationships built with individuals such as Tommy Koh and Koh Seow Chuan resulted in the landmark retrospective Wong Keen: A Singapore Abstract Expressionist, held in the Singapore Art Museum from 9–29 March 2007. The exhibition was preceded by Koh Seow Chuan's large donation of 63 paintings by Wong Keen to the Singapore Art Museum. These works ranged "from those he painted in the United States in the 1960s to more recent ones that were done in Singapore".

Wong's body of work was contrasted by commentators to the School of Paris-inflected style of painting that shaped the practices of Wong's Singaporean contemporaries; its presence in the National Collection was noted to "enable the museum to broaden the scope of its permanent collection to more fully present the history of Singapore and Southeast Asian art in its galleries". The exhibition was part of Singapore Season 2007, an exercise in cultural diplomacy.

A renewed practice (1996–) Since returning to Singapore in 1996, Wong has been represented by a series of art galleries in Singapore (including Shenn's Fine Art, Galerie Belvedere, and artcommune gallery) as well as taking up residencies and holding exhibitions in Asia. Able to spend much more time and energy on painting, Wong's practice saw a period of intense productivity, resulting in the renewal and consolidation of his aesthetic thoughts into several distinct series of paintings. These landscapes were a syncretic expression of Wong's practice thus far, incorporating within a single image the subject matter of landscapes, lotuses, and female forms (nudes and clothed). Landscape contours itself were often depicted as inherent within the forms of lotuses and nudes.

Bada Shanren's lotus paintings were a particularly important source of inspiration; Wong worked with reference to a Bada Shanren catalogue.

This series is mostly minimalist in colour but with varied monochrome tonalities—an adaptation of the techniques and aesthetics of monochrome Chinese ink wash paintings and calligraphy. The influence of Chinese freehand painting is especially strong in this series. This series was later fully elaborated from 2015-2018, when Wong transferred his initial exploration of Flesh into a sustained series that were mostly acrylic paint on canvas or paper and collages. The pictorial vocabulary of Flesh would come to include the carcass, the meat shop, burgers, and nudes. The process through which Flesh came to be incorporated within the artist's practice was, as described by Wong:"I was very much attracted to these meat stalls in the market. The shape of the meat, the colour of the meat, and when the sunlight come in and shone on the meat; the rhythm of the ribs that came from one end to the other formed a very nice composition to me... very quickly I was inspired to do some work on it, so I went back to the studio and started making some paintings. The outcome was about 13 oil paintings of different sizes—most of them huge." The pictorial language of Flesh is also a metaphor for what Wong understands us society's habit of mindless consumption, especially of women; this is expressed through the mutually implicated forms of fast-food burgers and the female nude. The Flesh series was first shown in 2015 as part of a fund-raising exhibition at The Substation; the most expensive painting at the exhibition, which sold for $40,000, was a painting from the Flesh series. The series was then shown at Flesh on Loop: Wong Keen's Solo Exhibition in 2018 before the large-scale exhibition Wong Keen: Flesh Matters in 2018 at Helutrans Art Space. The exhibition was co-organised by artcommune gallery and The Culture Story, and featured the mural-sized 305 x 610 cm painting The Aftermath (2017). Wong Keen: Flesh Matters presented 50 works of art, including an installation, and worked as a formal and comprehensive introduction of Wong's Flesh series.