Leading Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich is currently holding “Structures,” a solo exhibition at Tyler Rollins Fine Art through December 19, 2015.Pich’s fourth one-man presentation with the gallery marks the artist’s return to New York after his well-received exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013. Entitled “Cambodian Rattan: The Sculptures of Sopheap Pich,” the show was the first ever solo presentation at the museum by a Southeast Asian artist.On display here are two new series. Wall Structures features a suite of grid-like compositions made of raw bamboo and rattan, while Bare Reliefs have a lighter quality created out of thinner strands of the same material, which come together to form geometrical patterns of light and shadow. This latter series also incorporates stone harvested from local quarries, either coarsely hewn or polished in his studio to a glossy finish, that Pich is deploying for the first time.Also on show are a series of biomorphic sculptures inspired by the natural, organic forms that have been an important inspiration for the artist for a long time, whether they are botanical elements like vines or flowers, or deer antlers and other fauna.Born in Battambang, Cambodia in 1971, Pich moved with his family to the United States in 1984. He received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 before returning to Cambodia in 2002 to begin working with local materials. Although seemingly geometrical and abstract, Pich’s work is nonetheless inflected by his childhood memories of being in Cambodia during the turbulent political times and brutal genocides of the late 1970s.Sopheap Pich’s “Structures” runs through December 19, 2015 at Tyler Rollins Fine Art.
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