Matte poster
This black panther print is an art print ready to frame: a black cat facing forward, amber eyes, and a gold chain around his neck, against a plain background. This is César, a character from my Animal Kinhood series.
Panthera pardus
What looks like an absence of pattern is the pattern itself. Grazing light brings it back to the surface.
The species with the greatest habitat plasticity among the big cats: humid tropical forests in Malaysia and Borneo, African savannas, Caucasus scrubland, Himalayan slopes up to 5,200 m altitude and the peri-urban edges of Mumbai and Nairobi. Melanistic leopards concentrate in tropical forests with dense canopy.
In his story, César was eleven when his father closed the workshop one Friday and didn't come back on Monday. He'd left with a woman from Ipoh and left behind three things: the tools, a gold bar, and a three-word note. César didn't cry. He went down to the workshop, sat on his father's stool, and stared until it got dark. The calm face I created facing forward carries that day inside it, even though on the print you only see the stillness.
With Animal Kinhood I've spent years portraying dressed-up animals with the trades and everyday lives of ordinary people: César is a goldsmith in a block in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. This print pulls him out of that story and puts him in your home. I created it facing forward with a clean background, so on a wall it doesn't need anything around it; the matte finish gives no glare and looks good in a hallway or above a desk. If you like how it looks, there are more creatures in the rest of the collection, all mine, by Yago Partal.
