Sopheap Pich

Sopheap Pich (; born 1971) 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 (then known as the Khmer Republic) in 1971. He grew up and survived the Khmer Rouge while a child in Cambodia, in 1984 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 as a result of the murderous communist regime, the Khmer Rouge, killed over 2.5 million people in the span of less than four years. 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. One early painting from 1995, titled 'Conch's Flight' was done on two canvases. It is preserved and is in a private collection.

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: Rattan Resin Plywood Bamboo Metal Wire Dye Glue

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 lets 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 works with many mediums, he not only works with weaving, but also in sculpture and print.

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.

Morning Glory (2011) Morning Glory, a 17.5-foot 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. 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.

Residency programs 2016 – Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (March – April)

Public collections M+ Museum of Visual Culture, Hong Kong Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France Museum of Arts and Design, New York Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA Singapore Art Museum, Singapore Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA