Boy Kong
Biography
"I try to discover new artists that I like and bookmark them in my head but I'm a scatterbrained person. They all affect me, sometimes without even knowing it. You pick up something from everybody. Being around other artists promotes growth. If you use your own brain and get inspired by other artists, your stuff will always be different."
Boy Kong is one of the younger generations of self-taught artists who rose to prominence with his unique mix of art styles. By combining Ukiyo-e, surrealism, street art, and animal folklore, Boy Kong creates unique artworks. His works speak of uncertainty, anticipation, and hope, offering the public a sense of escapism through imagined alternate realities. Through his Asian heritage, Boy Kong creates unexpected narratives, inviting viewers to engage in a more complex debate. Resonantly ambiguous, his artworks invite viewers to recruit their own imaginations in working out different ways to interpret them, while often questioning how their social reception might shift among different audiences.
With the traditional and untraditional approaches to art, Boy Kong draws on the power of several mediums to transfix us and to undo our ingrained ways of seeing and thinking. Boy Kong often blurs the lines between the animal and human world, by his use of pastels and neons all wrapped in the context of folk culture."I like drawing animals. With humans it's okay but there's a certain characteristic with animals that I really like. And their coloring is much more interesting. I'm inspired to draw animals because of their natural pigments and patterns."