Two men in a darkened interior, the dim light creating shadows on their white shirts. Initially, they look like chatting with each other, and from the body language, maybe a confrontation. The one in foreground, back turned towards viewer, has his hands on the sides, while the one facing camera, looks cool with one hand in pocket and the other holding a cigarette on his purported left hand, but then it could be a mirror image, and if so, the man on the right is walking away from view. There is a palpable tension in this sepia-toned drama reminiscent of Ahmad Zakii Anwar’s Smokers Series, which catapulted him to fame and popularity in his artistic debut in 1997. It’s a style that is to expand into a brand of Urban Poetic Realism, found in his works in his Kota Sunyi (2007) and Kota Sepi (2012), with the setting in Kuala Lumpur. The acrylic on linen work, Two Men, is similar in theme and style to the works in Kota Sepi, which, however, all in charcoal on paper and smaller in size. It’s destiny that Ahmad Zakii Anwar gave up a lucrative illustration career in advertising to switch to fine art paintings and in a short span of years, was given a memorable mid-career survey exhibition called Disclosure at Galeri Petronas in 2008. His impressive dossier then were figuratives which started from his Smokers Series and continued with his Poetic Realism, sensual still-lifes, animals and traditional dancers. His tutelage was in Graphic Design, at the Mara Institute of Technology. He had several major solos abroad including two in the United States, namely Los Angeles (AndrewShire Gallery, Presence, 1999) and New York (Bones and Sinews, Barbara Greene Gallery, 2011). The other venues were in South Korea, Indonesia (Jogjakarta, Jakarta), Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand (Bangkok).