Receding Waves

Sopheap Pich creates scuIptural works using rattan that he gathers near his studio in Cambodia. Working with materials and objects reclaimed from the land-rattan, bamboo, knives, wire-connects his art to Cambodia's landscape. This landscape was an important player in the country's tragic history during Communist rule from 1975 to 1979, when nearly two million people were killed or displaced from their homes to the countryside. Sopheap's childhood memory of this period, during which his family fled Cambodia as political refugees, frequently inspires his art. This work is from a recent series of grid compositions. "These grid works," says the artist, "reduced to their bare materials and shapes, represent for me a kind of distillation of emotion, of remembrance, of reflections on what has influenced me, or the places I have been."*

*Sopheap Pich, gallery profile, Tyler Rollins Fine Art.