jimmy ong

VENUE: Plum Blossoms Gallery
17/F Coda Plaza
51 Garden Road
Central
Hong Kong

DATES: December 9 - 19, 1999

HOURS: Monday - Saturday: 10 am - 6:30 pm
Sunday: Closed

The directors of Plum Blossoms Gallery take great pleasure in presenting Jimmy Ong – Alter Altar, the first one-man exhibition of the prominent Singaporean artist in Hong Kong. Featuring works completed in the past two years, this exhibition displays Ong's powerful charcoal drawings and represents his new experiment in the iconic representation of the human body. Jimmy Ong – Alter Altar will be on view at the gallery from December 9 through 19, 1999.

Jimmy Ong’s figurative drawings in charcoal have roots in the tradition of narrative art but their imagery and content are of a lively, contemporary nature. His figures are full-blooded, expressive and communicative, emphasizing the nude figure drawn from observation, as well as from art of the past, often teasing us with clever references, or confounding us with puzzling innuendoes.

Rather than a candid, raw physicality, Ong’s subjects express a sense of studied stillness. They elevate to the level of the symbolic. Holding objects that provide contextual significance (needles, an iron), and their bodies outlined in their entirety within the frame, the figures assume a sense of sanctity, much like images of deities in both Western and Eastern religious art whose identities are determined by symbolic attributes. This mythic, monumental scale gives his works a rhythm that is slow, epic, and mysterious. The mutability of Ong’s image and its juxtaposition with the subjects of the drawing result in a series of provocative works that have great visual and psychological tension. They represent the spirits of a private pantheon, shadows of the subconscious thoughts that creep into our minds, the reflexes and neuroses of the sexual person.

Jimmy Ong is now based in New York. Born in 1964, he began his painting career in 1980 after winning the prestigious UOB (United Overseas Bank) Painting of the Year Award. This led to his critically well-received and successful art exhibition at the Alliance Françoise in Singapore during 1984. He was hailed as one of the most promising young artists at that time. Since then, Jimmy has been awarded many prestigious awards and scholarships not only in Singapore but also in the USA and Europe

Jimmy Ong has held numerous one-man and group exhibitions in the region as well as in the USA and Europe since 1984 and his most recent critically acclaimed solo exhibitions were mounted at Gallery 456 in New York and at the Dagmar Gallery in California simultaneously in the Spring, 1999. Jimmy Ong's work has been showcased in four individual art publications featuring a range of his drawings created over the years. Jimmy Ong's works have been collected by the Singapore Art Museum, the Monetary Authority of Singapore in New York and the Singapore Mission to the United Nations in New York.

For further information, please phone 2521 2189 or fax 2868 4398.