This
exhibition features new silk batik paintings by the young Cambodian
artist Long Sophea. Trained first as a traditional painter at the
art school in Phnom Penh, and then as a fabric designer in Moscow,
Long Sophea creates work which incorporates traditional Khmer characters,
ornaments, and themes into abstract geometric settings. In doing so,
she juxtaposes "international" techniques and forms to local
Khmer images and ornaments, thus asking how such local forms can best
be understood and reinterpreted in contemporary Cambodian society.
The
exhibition presents batik paintings which use two different techniques.
The more familiar hot wax technique uses hot wax as the drawing medium
for relatively heavy lines which keep the colored areas separate from
one another. In some works however, a less well known cold technique
makes use of thinned rubber cement to draw much more delicate dividing
lines and ornamental shapes on the silk before the color areas are
daubed in.
This
is Long Sophea's first solo exhibition in Phnom Penh. Her work has
previously been shown in exhibitions in Kiev (Ukraine) and Moscow
(the former Soviet Union). Recently she has shown her work in Phnom
Penh for the first time in the group exhibition "80 Years of
the Faculty of Plastic Arts" (Royal University of Fine Arts).
She has also recently shown her work in the now defunct "Art
in Public Places Project" of UNESCO.
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