Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

Literature: Literature: Roces, Alfredo, KIUKOK: Deconstructing Despair, A Finale Art File, Mandaluyong, Philippines, 2000 (illustrated)

ABOUT THE WORK

Like Graham Sutherland, Ang Kiukok brought an already personally formed vocabulary of form and color to handle visual challenges. The man is a rack of bones sticking out of his ribcage. The presence of the cyborg faced emaciated man holding a monster in the form of a fish creates a formal balance, imbuing a fearful restraint to an otherwise raging piscine angst about getting caught. The artist draws out the spiky aspect of the fish, its bony frame, predatory teeth, bladelike fins and tails. In other related series with animals, there is an underlying undercurrent of the monstrous creature becoming an extension of his personality. Often reduced to bare bones and fins, Ang‘s fish provided a sometimes stern, sometimes disconsolate look, with a moon adrift in the background. The subtle presence of a moon softens the tension in the imagery. Kiukok’s first formal recognition came in the form of a third prize award in the Shell National Students Art Competition for Calesa in 1953. Then, at the urging of Vicente Manansala, Kiukok launched his first one-man show at the Contemporary Arts Gallery in 1954. After that he earned numerous awards from the Art Association of the Philippines. For his works: Honorable Mention, “Still Life” (1951), First Prize, “The Bird” (1959), Third Prize, “Still Life in Red” (1963), Second Prize, “Fish” (1963), and Second Prize on “Geometric Still-Life Fish” (1963). The turning point of his career as an artist came in 1965 when he and the late Vicente Manansala traveled to New York. One can never enough insist on the importance of his trip to the United States, which led him to rediscover a strong link with reality, a direct feeling for disillusion, a tearing off of a veil that one fed him with illusions of intellectual speculation and worldly politeness. Upon his return to the Philippines, his style took a turn towards a new vivid Expressionist that including themes of agony, sorrow and madness. In his maturity, Ang Kiukok’s essential subject became even more the violence of the elements, above all of the forces that both create and destroy.