Antonius Kho was born in Klaten, a small town of
central Java. Central Java is a boiling pot of art and culture, in the area. Antonius’s
sources of inspiration are multiple. Batik designs and the figures of the
“Wayang” puppet show theater have probably provided his visual memory with the
notion of pattern. Antonius became interested in Batik making in Yogyakarta and
learnt it. He obtained art education in Germany, at FH-Cologne Art Academy by
majoring in glass paintings and textile art-tapestry. He does artworks such as sculptures and
paintings. His works is a synthesis of mosaic and textile art. His techniques
are a combination of that of painting, batik making, in collages arrangement
producing field intersection. Antonius borrows the ethnographic images to
recreate a meaning for his own use instead of the symbols. The subjects in
Antonius’s works are mostly about the mosaic of his life, the people around his
life, he work with various phases. It is almost like a circulation of his life.
He is inspired from the life of nature and it plays the main role concerning
color in his art works. Antonius Kho
combines the Europeans influence of colors with that of batik. The beautiful
nature of Indonesia and Java can be seen in his paintings as the animals like
elephants and other pets. His approach
of formal restructuring of his patterns into modern compositions is as a result
of the exposure to international art and learning from Germany. He uses various
technique in his works. He tries to manipulate different elements such as
materials, techniques, nature of materials used and media development.
Materials gain importance in his works. Along with colors such as acrylic
colors he uses different kinds of materials such as rags, jute, rope or string,
modeling paste and transparent paper not only attached together to give
artistic flavor but also to create a sense of power and objective. It looks
like 3-dimensional, because he likes cubism. Decoration is skillfully and
intensively done indicating a strong desire to produce artistic possibility. In
the end, his very characteristic lies on fields’ compilation, maintaining line
effects and colors. Antonius’s works are mosaic consisting of vignettes of
tropical and earth tones scattered across the canvas in an obsession patterning
of human figures and masks. When looking at it, though, it is impossible to
focus on these individual patterns or sub-patterns, one’s attention is drawn
away, made to run from one color surface to the other like a dance across the
canvas from one tone to the other. Eyes lurk everywhere in his art works,
almost like the large eyes of Wayang puppets or the all seeing eyes. His
paintings are figurative while having the formal qualities of abstraction. They
can thus be interpreted at both levels, without the one interfering on the
other. One may let oneself be either haunted by the weird presence of the
"eyes" and masks or entranced by the hypnotic quality of the color
patterns. Antonius realizes that his
life is divided into two cultural domains, i.e. in one year he has been exposed
to European and Indonesian culture which has made him unite the two in his
framework of mind. He tries to reconcile the contrasting West and East.Antonius
Kho now shares his time between Cologne and Ubud, Bali, and exhibits regularly
both in Europe and in Indonesia.
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