An interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen and helium swarms in vivid red and yellow splashes, the beginnings of predatory black holes surreptitiously nibbling at the nebulae’s edge. Perhaps we are not so high in the sky, peering instead over the spread wings of some soaring firebird above a scorched, yellow desert about to be engulfed by the night. Or could it be that our nose is planted among the shimmering petals of a wild, exotic jungle plant? That’s rather up to you, as it turns out. Schooled in traditional Cambodian painting at the Royal University of Fine Arts, graphic arts student Em Riem – whose new exhibition Hello, Sally! opens at Plantation on September 5 – won a scholarship in 2001 to Saint-Étienne École des Beaux-arts, in Paris. “A lot changed for me,” says the artist, today known almost as much for his modelling career as his canvases. “In school here, it was very academic: we respected mostly the traditional Angkor Wat style, traditional painting. It was very realist. Then in France, we respected concepts and ideas and then technique. It was very, very difficult for me the first year, but the teacher said: ‘No. Here, we don’t need nice drawings – we need technique and colour.’ When my paintings became abstract, I was thinking about what Picasso said: that some artists transform the yellow into the sun and some turn the sun into yellow. I got it. Abstract has nothing to present – just the colour, and the colour signifies freedom for the artists and also freedom for the viewer to think about it.”
WHO: Em Riem
WHAT: Hello, Sally! exhibition opening
WHERE: The Plantation, #28 Street 184
WHEN: 6pm September 5
WHY: “Abstract has nothing to present – just the colour, and the colour signifies freedom for the artists and also freedom for the viewer to think about it.” – Em Riem
