Sopheap Pich


Sopheap Pich is a Cambodian American contemporary artist. His sculptures utilize traditional Cambodian materials, which reflect the history of the nation and the artist's relation to his identity.

Early work and influences

Sopheap Pich was born in Battambang, Cambodia in 1971. He spent his childhood there until 1984, when he moved at age 13 to the United States of America. In 7th grade in the U.S., he enrolled into a school with a classroom setting and a teacher for the first time. He continued with his education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and in 2002 got his MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2002, he returned to Cambodia, to the same place he had evacuated from in formative years because of the refugee crisis. Pich's trip back home renewed and reunited him with his cultural identity, which impacts his artwork. He uses local material mostly found in Cambodia, for example, bamboo. Pich creates a wide range of different of works from sculptures to paints. His sculptures are usually quite large, and some are high enough to touch the top of an art gallery's ceiling. Many of his first creations were destroyed and recycled because there was no place to store them. He has many of the only rare photographs of this first works.

Style and materials

Sopheap Pich uses very specific materials in his work, related to his native Cambodia. His installation The Room consisted of bamboo sticks and dye. Other materials include:
Pich's style aims to be non-autobiographical, but he embraces the materials from his native country to depict its past. Trained as a painter, Pich later experimented with sculpting, and manipulating materials. He realized that sculpture was a way to be physically intimate with his environment. He manipulates his materials through boiling, cutting, bending, burning and dying. He let's the materials mostly speak for themselves, with no hidden narrative. His pieces are very environmental, and inexpensive looking. They are meant to look as though the time put in was worth more than the monetary value of the materials themselves.
Pich is a versatile artist, who not only works with weaving, but also sculpture and prints.

Major works

''Reliefs'' (2013)

Reliefs was Pich's third solo exhibition at the Tyler Rollins Fine Arts Gallery, and featured over ten different sculptural works. His reliefs represents how the artist explores the grid. Reliefs are made of rattan grids and covered with strips of burlap that were originally used from rice bags. The bags had already been repaired with string and twine. All of the works in the series are used with just two colors: mainly black and a little red. The red is made from powdered clay and the black is made from charcoal. These materials relate to Pich's work because they came from Cambodia, and he uses each material as a story that is a part of his culture. The grids, burlap, and strings are all exhibits of the detailed and perfected parts of Pich's work that he wanted to be noticed. He wanted to show a sense of fine execution in his craftmanship.

''Morning Glory (2011)''

Morning Glory, a 17.5 feet long sculpture, was first exhibited in 2011 at the Tyler Rollins Fine Arts gallery as part of Sopheap Pich's second solo show. Like many of his works, the sculpture is made of rattan and bamboo, materials that are specific to Southeast Asia, although it also includes plywood, wire and steel bolts. Pich's memories of the Khmer Rouge period are reflected in this piece. The morning glory, a common flower, was a main source of food in Cambodia during the dictatorship that ran from 1975 to 1979. In addition to mass murders, the Khmer Rouge rule led to famine, so the plant had a particular importance in people's survival. Its tentacular stems and buds are intertwined, and at the end opens in a wide flower. Its frail appearance and beauty contrasts with the atrocities that Cambodian people have experienced.

''A Room'' (2014)

A commission from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, A Room is a 40-feet long installation made of 1,200 bamboo strips. It was installed in the fall of 2014 in the museum's atrium. Pich wanted the installation to have an effect on the visitors, "in an emotional kind of way", so the installation is an immersive experience for the visitors, who can touch it and interact with it. Following the pattern of his works, the piece is inspired from Cambodia, and particularly the big temples that convey a sense of calm, and are real pieces of art. Bamboo is a natural material widely available in Cambodia. The absence of shops dedicated to art led Sopheap Pich to look into what was naturally present in the environment, but also to use more available supplies like common house paint and glue.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions
Group exhibitions
Residency programs
Public collections