www.kongho.com
Fulbright to Bulgaria 2010

Purchase instructions: email info@fulbright.org with artist name & details of art piece

My representational-imaginative floral-spiral paintings are about new sensory experience mingled with memories of familiar one. No matter where I have relocated to in my past life journey, the floras always bring back old memories. I believe that short-lived floras display not only the beauty of nature but also the transcendental values of humanity. My art is about the experience of transition, a sense of the bittersweet— a feeling of the loss for the past that left behind, and the excitement of the new phase in life.

Sumptuously painted in a technique consisting of free-flowing wave-like patterns held in check by subtly controlled washes of glaze and exacting trompe l’oeil floras and shells, my floral-spiral paintings exemplify the theme and style indicative of my ongoing body of work, the “Luminosity Series.” In my recent series, I have created an asymmetrical composition by off-setting the circular shapes of the primary spiral of the nautilus shell and the floral image, against the angular edges of the squared off canvas. Further interest is added to the composition through the articulation of the nautilus shell’s segments and the structure of flora. I achieve a feeling of dramatic motion by obliterating portions of my ornately patterned objects by merging them with a background of sweeping ribbons, rippling draping, folding petal veins, floating seashells, and dancing stripes. My composition is supported by a dense spatial field of interpreted interactions of forms and patterns found in nature. These patterns include repetitive clusters of meandering lines and portioned color filled areas that suggest ambiguous space. Rhythmic movement is created from a simultaneous growth and dissolution of both shell and flora with the background. A sense of fundamental transformation for which no beginning and end can be discovered evolves from my work. Contrasting colors with spontaneous meandering lines, precisely rendered symbols and improvised random patterns, add to the feeling of engagement with rather than separation from my bicultural life experience of Eastern and Western cultures and transcendental belief in Taoism and Zen Buddhism.

Kong Ho utilizes his bicultural background as a teaching artist professionally trained in both Chinese and Western visual art to teach and practice art. Currently, Ho is a full-time artist based in Pennsylvania. He earned a M.F.A. in painting and drawing at Texas Tech University in 1994. Since then, he taught as art professor and practicing artist at several universities (2001-2018). His paintings have been exhibited in more than 115 international and national exhibitions including United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Japan, China, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and Hong Kong. His artworks have been exhibited in venues such as the United Nations Headquarters and Chelsea Art Museum in New York City; World Bank Art Gallery and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC; the US Ambassadors’ Residences in Macedonia; Clymer Museum and Gallery in Washington; Amarillo Museum of Art and Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in Texas; Fine Arts Museums in New Mexico; Sunny Art Center in London; Joseph D. Carrier Art Gallery in Toronto; Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin; Atelier Montez in Rome; National Academy of Art and New Bulgarian University in Bulgaria; Museum of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in China, and Hong Kong Museum of Art in Hong Kong. Moreover, his work has been reviewed in APERO, 2020 and 2018; Average Art 15, 2017; Studio Visit, 2012; Direct Art, 2011; New Art International, 2010; Asian Art News, 2004 and The New Art Examiner, 1994 and Art in America, 1994.