KHOO SUI HOE, SELECTED WORK 1965 – 2020
Khoo Sui Hoe (b. 1939, Kedah) is a pioneering Malaysian modernist whose career bridges heritage and innovation. Born to a tailor and homemaker, he began his artistic path in 1959 at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore, where he trained under pioneering artists such as Georgette Chen, Cheong Soo Pieng and Lai Foong Moi. He later furthered his studies at the Pratt Graphic Center in New York, an experience that expanded his exposure to Western ideas and strengthened his international outlook.
While rooted in the legacy of the Nanyang school, Khoo’s artistic language moved far beyond its traditional colour schemes and regional motifs. His travels across Southeast Asia and beyond shaped a practice that blends Southeast Asian sensibilities with global influences. Over six decades, he developed a distinctive visual world of surreal, dreamlike figures and expressive, abstracted landscapes. A founding figure in regional art circles, Khoo’s works evoke memory, symbolism and the deeper terrain of the inner world.
” The Selected work 1965 – 2020″ will run from 18 November to 20 December 2025 at G13 Gallery
For enquiry, please contact us at : –
+6013 – 234 2126 (Wendy) or via WhatsApp www.wasap.my/60132342126
+6019 – 211 4697 ( Kenny ) or via WhatsApp http://www.wasap.my/60192114697
Bathers in Sarongs
Khoo Sui Hoe
80x88cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
RM45,000
Artist Statement
Khoo Sui Hoe has the touch of Modern primitivism; ethnic; ethereal; dream-like; escapism; expressionist, universal through the provincial; haunting; idyllic; mysterious; enchanting; wistful; surrealistic; vaguely Gauguinesque; a poet in paint; having a universal quality rare in twentieth-century art -these are words various writers have used to describe Sui Hoe or his works. They may give us an idea of Sui Hoe’s art but do feast your eyes on his works, spanning over two decades presented to you by G13 Gallery.
Sui Hoe has the uncanny ability to extract the essence of things, be they tree, river, rock, mountain, cloud or the human form. This is epitomised in his painted self-portraits. Anyone who knows Sui Hoe will immediately be struck by the resemblance, not only of his physical appearance but also of the essence of his being and his humour. Sui Hoe is also a master colourist, using the entire spectrum of colour with variations of tints, shades and tones, creating an unlimited variety of moods and expressions.
Sui Hoe often draws inspiration from his childhood experiences. The times he dipped in the river with cool flowing water under a blue sky with white clouds, surrounded by floating plants, reeds and rushes, plants in blossom, birds and the distant hills. Perhaps, we can appreciate Sui Hoe’s art with a similar mindset, like that of a boy in a fantasy world of his own, where elements of his surroundings would be accentuated and be the focus of his attention. Sui Hoe’s art invites us into his fantasy world, a realm in which many of us would feel comfortable in or even long for. Sui Hoe also often deploys one of his favorite devices in his paintings – curtains. He uses curtains to suggest the existence of windows, subtly drawing the viewers into his painted world.
In a glowing article, Ten Years – An appreciation of Sui Hoe’s works in 1974, Austin Coates, a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, commented that “The domain of Khoo Sui Hoe’s art lies amid some of mankind’s innermost urges or desires – the urge to rise up into the sky, and go on rising forever, the urge not to just fly with the wind, but actually become the wind, the urge of man and woman to float on air as one being, the urge to enfold another person entirely within oneself, the urge to be a mind unencumbered by a body. These urges being universal, and the artist having evolved a discipline and a convention of his own, enabling him to give them valid expression, his pictures have a universal quality, rare in 20th century art. They speak a universal language.”
In his recent works, the colours are more vibrant and the forms are more childlike. Picasso famously said, “It took me four years to paint like Rafael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” I think that is also true of Sui Hoe. Notwithstanding the changes in form and palette, we see him retaining the motifs we are familiar with. Each painting is closely linked to each other in such a way that, although they exist as unique entities in their own right, they also form part of a cohesive group, rather similar to separate movements in a symphony.
Selected work 1996 – 2019 by Khoo Sui Hoe will certainly be an enriching experience.
The exhibition will run from 6 – 20th August 2022.
