In an era of ‘Fake News’, there are also fake wrestling matches and nothing illustrates this more than in Mexican wrestling, Lucha Libre, where the act of removing the opponent’s mask called quackendriver results in victory. But the whole fight is a farce in which the performance is staged, so any one of the rivals could be triumphant, depending if the picture is turned upside-down. If the point is missed, the two wrestlers are shown in Pinocchio-like long noses. Therein it is too in life, as the artist C.K. Koh, full name Koh Cheng Kuan, likes to tell us. Lucha No Libre was the name of the solo exhibition at the now defunct Metro Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. The ‘Box Boy’ looking like SpongeBob SquarePants is C.K. Koh’s archetypal hero in his art as well as in four of his illustrated children’s books by Magicbird Publishers namely Do Noses Grow Long When Lies Are Told? (2012), What Is Your Dream? (2014), Box Boy At The Zoo (2016), and Box Boy: Attack Of The Onion Army (2018).
C.K. Koh graduated with a BA in Visual Communications at the University of Central England. He worked as a visual artist with Singapore’s Batey Ads, then The One Academy (deputy head, fine arts division) and Magicbird Publishing (art director).He had six solos since Pandora’s Box at The One Gallery in 2008, and his first overseas solo was at the Galerie Steph in Singapore in 2015, called A Thousand Works. C.K. Koh also had an installation booth, House Of Stars in Art Expo Malaysia 2017. His most recent solo, The Wanderer, was held at Gallery 10, Lot 10, in October 2020.