Aung Ko studied Fine Art Painting at the University of Culture, Yangon. Since 2002, he has worked as a full time artist and has exhibited throughout Asia, including the Singapore Biennale in 2008, the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in 2009 and a number of local and international group exhibitions.
Read MoreAung Ko had a solo exhibition in Esplanade – Jendela (Visual Arts Space) and Concourse Singapore. In 2007, he started an ongoing art project in his village called “Thuye`dan Village Art Project” in Pyay, Myanmar, that celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2012. His work was also included in the Goethe Institut’s “RiverScapes IN FLUX” exhibition which toured Hanoi, Saigon, Bangkok and Phnom Penh in 2012 and has travelled to Jakarta and Manila in 2013.
Aung Ko’s artworks comment the current socio-political reality.
Like all Southeast Asian practitioners of integrity, Aung Ko is never a slave to medium or technique, but rather carefully identifies the optimum form, medium and expressive genre to support and further his concept. Concept comes first. Southeast Asia is deeply syncretic and as such, populations are intellectually agile, seldom literal and quite used to juggling a variety of abstract approaches, even in the most ordinary situations. Conceptualism, a sense of metaphor and a feel for irony and the absurd are cultural givens in Southeast Asia, whatever a person’s level of education. In Southeast Asia, no one needs Duchamp to either make or understand conceptual art.
