SOPHEAP PICH (CAMBODIA, B. 1971)

Cambodia's most internationally prominent contemporary artist Sopheap Pich has been making waves in the art world for the presentation of his new body of work at the recent Venice Biennale. Pich's works sets out to critique, through the very deliberate choice of material – rattan and bamboo, the rigidity within the art and cultural space of postcolonial and post-independent Cambodia.

Maroon Floor Relief stands out in its direct emphasis to materiality, the central tenet and building block to his work. Unlike his other bodies of work that might allow the viewer a moment of contemplation in taking in the perceivable form, Maroon Floor Relief is sculpture, canvas, frame, material, or none, all at once. Bringing the conversation back to the very material, the frame highlights directly the tensions between the traditional and the modern, the colonial and the postcolonial, and the complexities between 'art' and 'craft'. Utilising local materials found in Cambodia – bamboo, rattan, beeswax, burlap and earth pigments, Pich's geometric creation of grid patterns play with the light and shadow in its surrounding space, adopting a more visceral approach to his work. The shadows cast by Maroon Floor Relief dance with each source of illumination, highlighting the voids amidst the solid spaces that depend on each other to build upon the composition.

The frame and lattice "evoke incarceration" despite its repetitive and perhaps meditative quality that might lead one to recall Agnes Martin's pastel canvases. Pich's structure, in its consistency, carries a pain that represents and calls attention to his nation's cultural, political and social history, and its repercussions till today.