In Paris this week, 10 Asian painters, including five from Cambodia - Kim Leng Ung (Beaux arts de Paris), Heng Ravuth, Emmanuelle Nhean, the famous Stef and the young Fia - will be in the spotlight.
The works of these artists will be exhibited alongside those of Thai, Japanese, Malaysian and Taiwanese artists on the theme of the colour blue. The exhibition opens on Thursday 19 December 2024 at Galerie OIA (Espace Oxone, 8 rue Chapon, Paris 75003 - opening from 5-9pm).
This is not the first time that the gallery has welcomed artists from the Kingdom. Among the other Cambodian artists that Galerie Oia has presented since its creation are Nou Sary, Dina Thun, Karona, Kosal Long, Din, Hom Rith, Seyha Hour, Changkrim Mil, Morn Chear, Chhim Sothy, Channy Choeun, Ponleu Prom, Van Chhovorn and Ramya Chuon.
In 2024, I had the pleasure of presenting several exhibitions: ‘Chaul Tchnam Thmey’ to mark the Cambodian New Year, followed by a two-part conversation with the gallery Arts d'Australie Stéphane Jacob, focusing on the encounter between Aboriginal art and the art of South-East Asia, with ‘Racines’ (16 May - 15 June) and ‘Strong’ (6 July - 5 October),’ explains Hervé Cadet, director of Galerie OIA:
“For this new exhibition, I called on ten artists from five South-East Asian countries. Both established and emerging artists from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan have shared their relationship with blue, and the feelings and emotions that the colour blue evokes for them.”
“Indigo, navy blue and ultramarine, sky blue, celadon, turquoise, cyan, cobalt.... The colour of the sea, sky and night, with shades, perceptions and meanings that vary around the world. In the West, blue often evokes tranquillity, fidelity, faith or melancholy. In Asia, it is a mirror of the soul, a symbol of wisdom, serenity and spirituality, but also the colour of youth or immortality... Through the works and eyes of these artists, the ‘Blue’ exhibition explores these multiple nuances”.
The artists
SU Mei-Yu
Born in Taiwan, SU Mei-Yu is a painter who trained at the Beaux-Arts in Taiwan and Paris. She has exhibited in France, Taiwan and Japan. She has a doctorate in art history and is a university lecturer in Taiwan. She is also an exhibition curator specialising in Matisse and traditional Chinese culture, and has organised landmark exhibitions including ‘The Golden Age of Impressionism’ and ‘Matisse and China’, for which she was awarded the Chevalier dans l'ordre des arts et des lettres in 1998.
Her works can be found in the collections of École des Beaux-Arts de Paris
Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
SU Mei - Yu says that she wants to paint ‘the memory of clouds on water’, in other words to paint the immaterial, labile and shifting imprint that accompanies our gaze from top to bottom, from sky to earth, as we glide through the fluidity of blades of colour drenched in water and pigments.
She refuses to use paintbrushes, preferring to apply her coloured paste with tools that she invents for herself. Her main concern is to leave a trace, to transpose a visual and tactile sensation onto the canvas, and she looks for the third party who, in her hands, makes this unspeakable transfer, this passage from the real to the symbolic, the metamorphosis of the banal into a sensitive testimony. She picks all sorts of leaves - philodendron, rhubarb, palm, as well as paliurus hemsleyanus - and gathers unusual objects or scraps found on the ground or in a DIY shop by Kim, her husband and painting companion.
These ‘objects’, most often destined for other uses, give SU Mei-Yu the opportunity to transgress their initial form, of which she retains only the most minimal trace. They are intercessors between the artist and the painting, which takes pride of place. The tool lends itself to SU Mei-Yu's gestures, but in the end it is the paint that has the last word.
When SU Mei-Yu sets to work, a kind of role-playing begins between her and her support, where each expects the other to come up with a surprise, a challenge. Scrapers, claws and painting knives intermingle and intertwine with the plant deposit. SU Mei-Yu is discreet, seeking a kind of anonymity of gesture by letting the tool and the medium interact, almost without her knowing it. She makes herself light, almost absent.
Yet the imprint is recognisable. It refers to knowledge, to what the eye knows about the object or the sheet, but the artist seeks to remove as much of its realistic substance as possible. The gesture is lively and furtive. He places and lets slide the colour that is superimposed on the colour underneath. It deposits signs, the effluvia of knowledge, but never asserts a figuration that is too legible. (Agnès Fabre, Author).
Kim-Leng Ung
Kim-Leng Ung is a Cambodian painter born in 1958. After fleeing Cambodia following the arrival of the Khmer Rouge, he arrived in France at the age of 17 and studied at the Beaux Arts in Paris.
His paintings reflect the trauma of exile and the Cambodian genocide, evoking loss, absence and buried memory, while seeking hope in suspended moments of intimacy and desire. His works can be found in the collections of the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan and the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan.
“I express myself through blue: although it is a primary colour, for me it represents something mysterious and profound. It is also a masculine colour that I use in my paintings as a form of expression that is both pictorial and sentimental.”
Heng Ravuth
Heng Ravuth is a Cambodian artist born in 1985 and a graduate of the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh.
Heng Ravuth's artistic career is marked by the initial role played by photography in his exploration of body language. He then turned to painting to pursue his aesthetic and inner quest, exploring his own personality and its interaction with the world around him.
Through these images of her naked body, Heng reveals her sincerity, revealing a double vulnerability: to the outside world, but also to her deepest emotions.
“Blue is a colour that calms and relaxes me. Blue is associated with something soft for me, with peace. And it's as if blue transports me to another place, as if it takes over from my imagination”.
Nobuko Murakami
Nobuko Murakami is a Japanese visual artist who has lived in France since 1997. She explores the relationship between the visible and the invisible, drawing on the beliefs and traditions that have accompanied her since childhood.
Nobuko studies and explores all the possibilities offered by paper, from the traditional technique of Origami, reinterpreted to create sculptures, masks and site-specific installations, to Braille writing, which links the visible to the invisible. In this exhibition, she presents a paper sculpture as well as a wide range of her work in cyanotype, which lets the light reveal her creations.
“Cyanotype is a way of experimenting and interacting with nature, like a form of alchemy, playing with the sun, the composition of iron and salt. We also have these essential minerals in our bodies.”
“Perhaps the reason we seek the sun is because we want to etch a blue dream (poetry) into our bodies.”
Stef
Stéphane Delaprée, alias Stef, is a French visual artist. Initially a draughtsman, he turned to painting in 1992, developing the ‘Happy Painting’ style, centred on simplicity and bright colours.
After arriving in Cambodia in 1994, he has since pursued his quest for happiness, developing his ‘Happy Painting’ approach and depicting scenes of daily life in Cambodia.
Collections: Ahuja Art Museum, Calcutta, India
Emmanuelle Nhean
Emmanuelle Nhean is a Cambodian painter who has lived in France since 1980. Combining the pictorial tradition drawn from the Reamker (the Khmer epic poem adapted from the Ramayana) with modern and contemporary Western painting, she navigates between figuration, abstraction and Khmer art.
Emmanuelle Nhean's works sometimes seem to delve into the world's memory, sometimes into her own, bringing to light the dreams of her childhood or the most ancient myths.
Sakon Malee
Sakon Malee is an artist from the Isan region in north-east Thailand, a land of Buddhist culture rich in tradition.
His work is inspired by the distinctive Buddhist frescoes of this region, where art and spirituality meet in compositions combining scenes of daily life, picturesque landscapes and religious figures.
Faizal Yunus
Faizal Yunus is a Malaysian painter, engraver and sculptor. Highly sensitive to environmental issues, his mastery of contrasts, depth and perspective evokes memories of the landscapes and landforms of his past. Prize: MEAA 2019 (Malaysian Emerging Artist Award).
Dibsanist
Dibsanist celebrates nature through delicate, minimalist works that reproduce organic forms that carry meaning, memories and traditions.
Inspired by traditional medicine, but also by underwater flora and fauna, she models - as well as paints - leaves, coral, sea fans, seaweed and sea urchins, which she then fixes a few millimetres above the canvas, creating a play of shadows and telling much more than the story of this silent world.
Fia
Fia is a young Cambodian visual artist, who channels her creativity into performances, paintings and mixed media to tackle societal issues, with a particular focus on women's empowerment.
About Art
“After a career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then in Parliament serving the island of Réunion, the need to return to what I was deeply passionate about, art, became a necessity. My travels throughout Asia, North America, Europe, the Indian Ocean and my expatriation to Australia have enabled me to discover fascinating cultures, but also to meet many artists and enrich myself on a human and spiritual level.”
“After training with Stéphane Jacob-Langevin, a specialist in Aboriginal art, I set up Galerie Oia in 2023. Galerie Oia was conceived as the answer to my aspirations: open to the whole of the East, with an interest in both the most ancient mythologies and the most contemporary expressions. A singular and nomadic place, dedicated to contemporary creation from the immense Asian continent”.
Hervé Cadet - Director of the OIA Gallery
Tél. 06 87 88 70 27
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