Artist Statement
I attempt to resist indifference through meticulous manual techniques, building a kind of pathological order through layering, glazing, and accumulation. These are not only my methods of painting but also my means of staying connected to the world. Every layer of color often carries the buried memory of a person—or an entire collective. This process makes my work feel closer to the construction of an installation, one that, through psychic resonance, reaches a state of “failed viewing.”
I have never believed that an image can be whole. Rather than a seemingly finished composition, I’m drawn to the glimmers within imperfection—the remnants that slip out of dreams, fragmented yet more truthful than any coherent narrative. In my images, there are always abandoned emotions or dislocated content—forgotten voices speaking their own language from within the ashes.
My ongoing series include The Forest Song and The Silent Epidemic, which together form an expanding visual universe—a psychic theatre with no clear route of entry. Here, the viewer is not merely a spectator, but a complicit witness.
Bio
Khankwok is a sydney-based visual artist whose work explores residual perception and dream logic through layered figuration and symbolic ryhthm. His current focus is on emotional compression and the tension between gaze, memory, and disrupted narrative space.