About the Artwork
Alvin Ong’s paintings playfully combine diverse visual vocabularies, in surreal bodily configurations suspended between quotidian and intimate moments. His recent head portraits made during the pandemic stem from his ongoing painterly explorations of desire, identity and introspection. Manifesting as bodily extensions of the self through intimate portrayals of inner states of being, dynamic layers of paint are a result of multiple changes in direction borne of an organic and fluid working process.

About the Artist
Alvin Ong (b. 1988) mines the Western and Eastern art history canon to create fragmented yet intimate paintings, often containing hints of technology and signifiers of specific locations. At the age of 16, he became the youngest winner of the UOB Painting of the Year Award, Singapore (2005). A graduate of the Ruskin School of Art and the Royal College of Art, he has exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum; Asian Civilisations Museum (Singapore); Peranakan Museum (Singapore); Northampton Contemporary (UK); National Portrait Gallery (UK) and Royal Academy of Arts (UK). His works are collected by ILHAM Gallery (Malaysia); Ingram Collection (UK), X Museum (China) and the Victoria & Albert Museum (UK). He lives and works in Singapore and London.

Ong is represented by Yavuz Gallery.

Artwork and profile images courtesy of the Artist and Yavuz Gallery