Pony Ma - Sail Away

Product description

Pony Ma (1983, Taiwan)

Yu-Chun “Pony” Ma grew up drawing manga in Taipei City, Taiwan, before moving to New York City at age 24. After doodling through English lessons, he received his first formal art instruction at the Fashion Institute of Technology. There, Pony discovered acrylics and fell in love with pop surrealism. The year he graduated, Pony won the Curator’s Award at 440 Gallery in Brooklyn. Since his first solo show at Freddy’s Bar, Pony’s work has been shown at many galleries in California such as La Luz de Jesus, Thinkspace Projects, Modern Eden, and Giant Robot store, as well as in Louisiana’s Baton Rouge Gallery. He has also shown his work internationally at Beinart Gallery in Australia. Pony’s work can be found in private collections from New York City to France to Australia, as well as on album covers and in magazines such as Catapult. You can see Pony’s work in the flesh at Chashama’s Open Studios, held annually at the Brooklyn Army Terminal NY.

ARTIST STATEMENT: 

Using the iconography of pop culture and the surreal visual vocabulary of dreams, my work evokes the uncanny images concocted by our subconscious minds. Each painting is a riddle, and each person’s experiences and memories interact with the symbols in my work to conjure a meaning as unique as each viewer. The mystery is the point: each painting is a mirror, inviting the viewer to recognize the inner workings of their minds which I have laid out on the canvas. Like the dreams and childhood memories that inspire them, my paintings are sometimes humorous, sometimes dark, always just beyond the reach of explanation.