When I go back to my village, the children look at me with wide eyes because I look strange to them
Hour Seyha and Nget Chanpenh, recent graduates of the Phare Ponleu Selpak Visual Art School, live side-by-side in Battambang – lauded as the epicentre of Cambodia’s arts scene. But their styles, on exhibition at Romeet Gallery, remain distinct. Seyha’s Children of the Countryside is a series of stark portraits, composed of layers of circles and lurid in colour. “One day, I was painting while I was angry,” he says. “I painted in big brushstrokes, violently; then the paintbrush fell out of my hand. I picked it up and decided to paint without anger; I had to control my anger. Painting in circles is meditation for me.”
Chanpenh’s During the Dark bears more relation to the Expressionist style: darkly rendered hues, illuminated from beneath by lighter shades, form distorted and blurred images of his family. But both artists share the sentiment, summed up by curator Kate O’Hara, that “Art and life are closely related.”
Seyha’s Children of the Countryside is playful, even when the subject is morbid or mournful. A full-body portrait of a crying girl hangs in the centre of a long wall, but she’s realised as a cartoon character or caricature through the enhancement of certain features. Her eyes, like those of all of the children in the series, are massive. “When I go back to my village, the children look at me with wide eyes because I look strange to them,” the artist says.
Although he may appear strange, Seyha is no stranger. The relationship he has with the children of the countryside mirrors our own relationship with his subjects. It is a relationship which simultaneously feels the pangs of intimacy while experiencing the distance of an observer. Seyha speaks of a need to return our gaze to the hardships of such children, forgotten by the residents of fast-developing cities. But the gaze works both ways: the children’s wide-eyed stares recall us to ourselves, to our own state, most likely enviable by comparison.
Children of the Countryside requires the audience to recognise the faces and experiences of Seyha’s subjects and to consciously experience that recognition as a shift from egocentrism to empathy. This is the common impetus behind Seyha and Chanpenh’s work. “Development is local to the city,” says Chanpenh, whose series concentrates on the lives of his family in the provinces. “I want to return attention to the countryside.” During the Dark is the artist’s attempt to divert the capital’s gaze from itself to those closest to him: his own flesh and blood. Sometimes eyes recede into wide faces and are difficult to discern; others blur into the block colour of the visage. Perhaps he wants us to scrutinise those faces; to get closer or stand back; to interact.
“Every painting that I make is of what I know very well,” Chanpenh says, but both artists share a concern that their audience doesn’t know their subjects’ lives well enough. Their painting constitutes an attempt to move the image from the countryside to the city and to transmit knowledge from the artist to his audience. When we see the image, we know the subject: that’s their philosophy.
WHO: Hour Seyha and Nget Chanpenh
WHAT: Children of the Countryside and During the Dark
WHERE: Romeet Gallery, St. 178
WHEN: Now
WHY: A privileged insight into a provincial world