Category: Art

For ten years, Daniel Rothenberg has woken up every morning and done exactly the same thing. Camera in hand, he’s walked the streets of Cambodia’s cities photographing everyday life: the picturesque and sometimes not so picturesque. Rothenberg has documented the changing times.

“The last ten years of photographing on the streets here feels a lot like watching a teen struggle through the time of becoming an adult,” muses the American. “The people are constantly learning, growing, changing… I like shooting here more and more as the years pass.”

A taster of the fruits of Rothenberg’s years of photographing the Kingdom is on show at Tepui right now. Taken from the ongoing Life Is series, the exhibition, snappily titled Snapshots, includes images taken between 2003 and 2013 in Phnom Penh, Battambang and Siem Reap. Rothenberg and his camera roved markets and alleys, searching for everyday scenes that crystallised Cambodia’s rapid development and dynamism.

“When I first started this series, although there was deep poverty everywhere, the huge gap between the rich and the poor was not nearly as extreme,” Rothenberg explains. “The people were also more private and shy, and in many places had less contact with foreigners, cameras or social media.” The explosion in technology in recent years has, he says, left some of the Cambodians he encounters jaded, but others who were once shy have become “very engaged participants in the image-making process”.

The close affinity which Rothenberg feels with his subjects is apparent in Snapshots. Determinedly eschewing the ‘exotic idyll’ shots of commercial photographers, Rothenberg’s images, while not exactly gritty, don’t shy away from the less picturesque aspects of existence: two kids ride the Battambang railway with smiles on their faces, but in the wide-angle periphery of the image, trash-piles and makeshift housing frame their picture-postcard joy; a child sits prettily in a hammock, but underneath her father lies flat out on a bare tile floor.

“Not to be rude – there are many great photographers here – but most of the images I see making it into photo books are not really about real life here,” he says. “To me, real everyday life is everything that happens at the markets, it’s about all that’s being done to survive and grow and be happy in a place where so many have so little.”

If Rothenberg’s fascination with the behind-the-scenes reality of Cambodia sounds slightly cinematic, that’s because in a previous life he worked with the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Altman on the camera and production aspects of their movies. “Working in film for so many years taught me many different things. It taught me how to see… how to respect and communicate with my subjects both verbally and non-verbally and it taught me how to capture a particular scene in a way that spoke in my voice.”

In Snapshots there are hints of his movie days in the atmospheric light and shadow, the vivid contextualisation, the wacky shot angles. These techniques make for an exhibition full of fluidity and the sense of change.

“The changes are a broad mix of positive and negative,” he says of Phnom Penh’s last decade. “The increase in corruption, super-concentration of huge wealth, land-grabbing and all that is associated with the nouveau riche class is sad to witness, while at the same time the increase in educated youth, social media and overall awareness of how badly they are being abused by their own government and rich neighbours is heart-warming… the changes are just in their infancy, that’s for sure. I just try to capture reality for a cross-section of the real people who live around me. And I hope I keep getting better at it every day.”

WHO: Daniel Rothenberg
WHAT: Snapshots, a photographic exhibition of everyday life in Cambodia
WHERE: Tepui at Chinese House, #45 Sisowath Quay
WHEN: Now until the end of October
WHY: Ten years of Cambodia’s evolution in photographs

 

For ten years, Daniel Rothenberg has woken up every morning and done exactly the same thing. Camera in hand, he’s walked the streets of Cambodia’s cities photographing everyday life: the picturesque and sometimes not so picturesque. Rothenberg has documented the changing times.

“The last ten years of photographing on the streets here feels a lot like watching a teen struggle through the time of becoming an adult,” muses the American. “The people are constantly learning, growing, changing… I like shooting here more and more as the years pass.”
A taster of the fruits of Rothenberg’s years of photographing the Kingdom is on show at Tepui right now. Taken from the ongoing Life Is series, the exhibition, snappily titled Snapshots, includes images taken between 2003 and 2013 in Phnom Penh, Battambang and Siem Reap. Rothenberg and his camera roved markets and alleys, searching for everyday scenes that crystallised Cambodia’s rapid development and dynamism.

“When I first started this series, although there was deep poverty everywhere, the huge gap between the rich and the poor was not nearly as extreme,” Rothenberg explains. “The people were also more private and shy, and in many places had less contact with foreigners, cameras or social media.” The explosion in technology in recent years has, he says, left some of the Cambodians he encounters jaded, but others who were once shy have become “very engaged participants in the image-making process”.

The close affinity which Rothenberg feels with his subjects is apparent in Snapshots. Determinedly eschewing the ‘exotic idyll’ shots of commercial photographers, Rothenberg’s images, while not exactly gritty, don’t shy away from the less picturesque aspects of existence: two kids ride the Battambang railway with smiles on their faces, but in the wide-angle periphery of the image, trash-piles and makeshift housing frame their picture-postcard joy; a child sits prettily in a hammock, but underneath her father lies flat out on a bare tile floor.

“Not to be rude – there are many great photographers here – but most of the images I see making it into photo books are not really about real life here,” he says. “To me, real everyday life is everything that happens at the markets, it’s about all that’s being done to survive and grow and be happy in a place where so many have so little.”

If Rothenberg’s fascination with the behind-the-scenes reality of Cambodia sounds slightly cinematic, that’s because in a previous life he worked with the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Altman on the camera and production aspects of their movies. “Working in film for so many years taught me many different things. It taught me how to see… how to respect and communicate with my subjects both verbally and non-verbally and it taught me how to capture a particular scene in a way that spoke in my voice.”

In Snapshots there are hints of his movie days in the atmospheric light and shadow, the vivid contextualisation, the wacky shot angles. These techniques make for an exhibition full of fluidity and the sense of change.

“The changes are a broad mix of positive and negative,” he says of Phnom Penh’s last decade. “The increase in corruption, super-concentration of huge wealth, land-grabbing and all that is associated with the nouveau riche class is sad to witness, while at the same time the increase in educated youth, social media and overall awareness of how badly they are being abused by their own government and rich neighbours is heart-warming… the changes are just in their infancy, that’s for sure. I just try to capture reality for a cross-section of the real people who live around me. And I hope I keep getting better at it every day.”

WHO: Daniel Rothenberg
WHAT: Snapshots, a photographic exhibition of everyday life in Cambodia
WHERE: Tepui at Chinese House, #45 Sisowath Quay
WHEN: Now until the end of October
WHY: Ten years of Cambodia’s evolution in photographs

Life in 12th century Europe was a rather grim affair. Merrie Olde England laboured under the yoke of the Norman invaders, stuck in an interminable dark age for which no one could find the light switch; the Christian church came up with the idea of Purgatory, just in case everyone wasn’t miserable enough; and Iceland, always socially conscientious, introduced health insurance. For the Black Death. Truly, the European Middle Ages were a tough gig.

Over in Cambodia, the 12th century was an altogether more luminous era. The Khmer Empire, although often in conflict with its Champa neighbours, was most definitely in the ascendant. And what better way to legitimise national prowess, thought then King Suryavarman, than to build a massive f*ck-off city in the middle of the sweltering jungle? So while the Brits farmed cowpats and America and Australia were yet to become twinkles in colonial eyes, the Cambodians raised one of the wonders of the world in Siem Reap: the city of Angkor.

They may have been riding high when it came to civic planning, but 12th century Cambodians still had spiritual wobblers just like everyone else. At least, according to Siem Reap-based artist Bruno Levy they did. “Since the dawn of time,” Levy’s website intones, “man questions himself about the forms of the universe, the runnings of the world… and about his personal role in this prodigious machinery.” In an effort to puzzle out the problems of existentialism, Angkor’s denizens turned to the mystical power of the mandala.

An ancient Hindu-Buddhist symbol, the mandala represents the universe in tidy microcosmic form. Its square shape and symmetry confer a comprehensible system upon the buzzing, booming confusion of existence; its coherence promotes meditative contemplation in those who look upon it. In fact, the mandala is so trippily spiritual it’s said to promote a trance-like state. The Angkorian kings found the symbol so potent they modelled their new kingdom on it, creating a structural replica of the sacred symbol, a “Cosmos-City”, as Levy puts it.

Looking at Levy’s paintings, the hypnotic effect is palpable. The collection Angkorian Mandalas, on show at Meta House from September 25, reimagines Angkor’s architectural gems as highly detailed mandalas, literalising the cosmic city in graphic form. Since 2011 Levy has worked with “furious fervour” on the mandala series, employing digital techniques and his 25 years’ experience in advertising to create his “future-oriented Angkorian artworks”. Replete with detail and visually complex, Levy’s mandalas are a bit like a magic-eye painting for the soul.

His aim is not to make you feel all trippy, says Levy, but to share his admiration for ancient Khmer culture and to expand your appreciation of the real, now ruined temples. “I hope my pictures will follow the path of the ancient Khmer architects and sculptors,” says Levy with disarming humility. “[They] are, finally, the genuine authors of these artworks, of which I am just the interpreter.”

WHO: Bruno Levy
WHAT: Whacked-out mandala artworks
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: From 6pm September 25
WHY: The power of Cambodia’s cosmic city is pretty trippy

 

Life in 12th century Europe was a rather grim affair. Merrie Olde England laboured under the yoke of the Norman invaders, stuck in an interminable dark age for which no one could find the light switch; the Christian church came up with the idea of Purgatory, just in case everyone wasn’t miserable enough; and Iceland, always socially conscientious, introduced health insurance. For the Black Death. Truly, the European Middle Ages were a tough gig.

Over in Cambodia, the 12th century was an altogether more luminous era. The Khmer Empire, although often in conflict with its Champa neighbours, was most definitely in the ascendant. And what better way to legitimise national prowess, thought then King Suryavarman, than to build a massive f*ck-off city in the middle of the sweltering jungle? So while the Brits farmed cowpats and America and Australia were yet to become twinkles in colonial eyes, the Cambodians raised one of the wonders of the world in Siem Reap: the city of Angkor.

They may have been riding high when it came to civic planning, but 12th century Cambodians still had spiritual wobblers just like everyone else. At least, according to Siem Reap-based artist Bruno Levy they did. “Since the dawn of time,” Levy’s website intones, “man questions himself about the forms of the universe, the runnings of the world… and about his personal role in this prodigious machinery.” In an effort to puzzle out the problems of existentialism, Angkor’s denizens turned to the mystical power of the mandala.

An ancient Hindu-Buddhist symbol, the mandala represents the universe in tidy microcosmic form. Its square shape and symmetry confer a comprehensible system upon the buzzing, booming confusion of existence; its coherence promotes meditative contemplation in those who look upon it. In fact, the mandala is so trippily spiritual it’s said to promote a trance-like state. The Angkorian kings found the symbol so potent they modelled their new kingdom on it, creating a structural replica of the sacred symbol, a “Cosmos-City”, as Levy puts it.

Looking at Levy’s paintings, the hypnotic effect is palpable. The collection Angkorian Mandalas, on show at Meta House from September 25, reimagines Angkor’s architectural gems as highly detailed mandalas, literalising the cosmic city in graphic form. Since 2011 Levy has worked with “furious fervour” on the mandala series, employing digital techniques and his 25 years’ experience in advertising to create his “future-oriented Angkorian artworks”. Replete with detail and visually complex, Levy’s mandalas are a bit like a magic-eye painting for the soul.

His aim is not to make you feel all trippy, says Levy, but to share his admiration for ancient Khmer culture and to expand your appreciation of the real, now ruined temples. “I hope my pictures will follow the path of the ancient Khmer architects and sculptors,” says Levy with disarming humility. “[They] are, finally, the genuine authors of these artworks, of which I am just the interpreter.”

WHO: Bruno Levy
WHAT: Whacked-out mandala artworks
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: From 6pm September 25
WHY: The power of Cambodia’s cosmic city is pretty trippy

[gdl_gallery title=”GALLERY_TITLE” width=”GALLERY_WIDTH” height=”IMAGE_HEIGHT” galid=”1″ ]
There comes a time in the life of every feminist critic and writer when, according to the law of sod, she happens across a press release bearing the immortal first line: ‘Vincent Broustet invites us into the passionate world of young Khmer women.’ To review or not to review, she wonders. Don’t be ridiculous. Martha, fetch me my gun.

My pen! I mean my pen! How Freudian, please excuse. Anyway, how kind of Monsieur Broustet to invite us to his exhibition, let us proceed post haste to see what we can see. The passionate world of young Khmer women, otherwise known as Broustet’s solo show Queen For A Night, is only on view in Siem Reap until October 31; what if you want to see it twice?? We should hurry.

Queen For A Night focuses on Khmer women’s “transformation from everyday selves into unabashed beauties for Cambodian weddings and other significant occasions”. Unabashed! Saucy minxes that they are. That may sound like an excuse for us all to ogle women in various stages of undress and picturesque disarray, hair all of a tumble, ballgown slipping cheekily off one ‘unabashed’ shoulder, but undoubtedly the exhibition’s iconographic subtext contains some contrapuntal critique.

Assiduously, your feminist reviewer scans the aforementioned press release for thoughtful comment on the egregious sins of the male gaze, or a meaty gobbet of French philosophy at the very least. “The ritual of preparing for special events takes hours of enthusiastic groundwork, usually beginning with a visit to a favourite hair salon to have tresses elaborately styled and curled.” Tonsorially accurate, no doubt, no doubt, but few of us go to exhibitions to think about curling tongs, it must be said.

Ever investigative, your roving reporter buttonholed Robina Hanley, manager of McDermott Gallery in Siem Reap, to explain further. “You are unable to tell the difference in the girl who works in a factory from the girl who comes straight from the countryside. Neither girl is chic in her everyday life, but when she has a chance to dress for a ceremony or party, she is usually unrecognisable, sometimes full of confidence, sometimes a little embarrassed. Vincent sees this every day in Cambodia and when you examine his paintings you can see tenderness and respect in every brushstroke.”

That brings us to the paintings themselves. Influenced by “Rembrandt, Hugo Pratt and all the great artists in between,” Broustet positions his work firmly in the Impressionist tradition, his paintings redolent of Degas showing fleeting, flirting, fin de siecle ballet dancers. Except with much manlier shoulders, it must be said. Suffused with slabs of toothache-inducing satin, oddly proportioned women hover in a perspectiveless world, largely bereft of distinctive facial features or expression, but probably wishing they were somewhere else. So might you be, dear viewer; so might you be.

In a week when Miley Ray Cyrus has been much on everyone’s minds and even more in our Facebook feeds, whether we like it or not, it’s perspicacious to ask whether the kerfuffle over cultural appropriation and neo-orientalism that resulted from Mi-Cy’s twerkathon has a wider relevance. Broustet, who has lived and worked outside of his native France for much of his life, says that his “sketches and paintings do not engage in exoticism, but instead are transcriptions of moods and atmospheres, the pursuit of what is and remains common to every human, every landscape, every shadow”.

That Broustet voluntarily exonerates himself from the charge of exoticism before anyone has the chance to lay it at his door is interesting. You might even say telling; I would not say that, of course, but you might. Whether Broustet’s paintings themselves present a postcolonial perspective of ‘the East’ – an East of sensuality, latent sexuality and quantifiable stasis – is moot. As Broustet says, he “doesn’t believe in exoticism; what is normal to one person can seem exotic to another. Just because you haven’t experienced something doesn’t make it exotic.”

However, his works inarguably follow in the aesthetic tradition of painters who essentialised non-Western places and people in this tidy way. If you were one of the bajillion VMA viewers who was mild to moderately offended by Miley Ray Cyrus smacking a lady-bear’s ‘juicy butt’ before the 9pm watershed and making Willow Smith cry, you may also be offended by other postcolonial, patriarchal narratives. So, you know, buyer beware.

WHO: Vincent Broustet
WHAT: Queen For A Night art exhibition
WHEN: August 31 – October 31
WHERE: McDermott Gallery, Old Market, Siem Reap
WHY: Is this a trick question?

After three weeks of gallery openings, exhibitions and earnest heart-to-hearts with artists in New York City, Than Sok decided to become a monk. Understandable really: the Big Apple’s art scene can be tiring even in its quieter moments, and for Khmer artists this year’s Season Of Cambodia festival was not one of the quiet times. In the midst of his residency at Governor’s Island, 29-year-old installation artist Than joined Wat Samakiram in Brooklyn for two weeks, shaving his head, donning saffron and leaving the art studio far behind.

At least Than thought he swapped the studio for the spiritual life, but a true artist rarely makes a clean getaway. No sooner had he divested himself of his worldly goods and chattels than well-wishers from Brooklyn’s laity presented Than with alms meant to meet his basic needs once he’d done his two weeks of Wat time. Soft furnishings, soap, toothpaste, deodorant (cleanliness is next to Godliness, after all), clothing, cashmoney and other gifts came into Than’s hands from his newfound congregation.

These offerings make up Than’s third solo exhibition, Promotion, on show at Sa Sa Bassac until October 19. Exploring the dark art of gift-giving, the show draws explicit parallels between Than’s time as a monk in New York and his experiences during Cambodia’s recent national elections, during which period the artist also received gifts, this time from party ‘volunteers’. What, wondered Than, was the intent behind all this apparent goodwill and gifting?

“The gifts from political parties and the gifts from the United States [laypeople] are not different,” explains Sa Sa Bassac Project Manager Chum Chanveasna, speaking on behalf of Than. “Everyone wants to receive something back. The gifts from political parties are to promote those parties and [ask] people to vote for them; the gifts to monks are to promote belief in religion. People offer these gifts to ask for happiness during the present and next life.”

The notion of promotion – of an ideology, of a personal petition, even of oneself – informs Than’s exhibition. The objects from New York and Phnom Penh are arrayed on shelves beside watercolours of their likenesses: the doubling up of object and image is, according to Chum, a nod to the promotion of advertising. “The drawing can be marketing, like a banner or flyer to promote the objects displayed on shelves for sale.” Thus the “gifts” become revealed as a currency of exchange: to give is to receive, and all givers give with one hand and expect to take with the other, Than conjectures.

Promotion follows on from Than’s previous work, much of which is concerned with the rituals and behaviours surrounding belief systems. Working across sculpture, installation, video and performance, the Takeo-born artist is drawn to examine religion and ritual because “religion walks along with events and activities of people, and it shows that people have always been connected with religion,” says Chum.

Connected with religion and ritual they may be, but neither priests nor politicos are above buying preference on occasion. It’s this base side of philanthropy which Promotion explores; after all, you don’t need to join holy orders to know that, for some people at least, to give is to receive..

WHO: Than Sok
WHAT: Promotion exhibition
WHERE: Sa Sa Bassac Gallery, #18 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: Until October 19
WHY: “Religion walks along with events and activities of people, and it shows that people have always been connected with religion”

“When I first saw that painting, I thought it was so ugly my friend and I were going to throw darts at it,” deadpans Teri Horton. That is until a local art instructor told Horton that, although he was no expert, it looked like that ugly, dartboard-bound painting might very well be by the hand of none other than Jackson Pollock. “Who the fuck is Jackson Pollock?” retorted Horton, and so begins Harry Moses’ documentary.

Truck-driving, trailer-abiding Teri may not have been totally au fait with Pollock’s oeuvre, which encompasses some of the priciest works of the Western canon, but she was about to become something of an expert. Horton, who loves a bargain, purchased the “ugly” action painting in a California thrift store for the princely sum of five bucks (bargained down from eight, she points out), and Moses’ movie, Who The Fuck Is Jackson Pollock?, traces her subsequent battle to prove her thrifty Pollock as the real deal and not, well, a load of Pollocks, because if it’s real Horton stands to make $50 million north of her five-dollar investment. What emerges from the documentary is not just one woman’s crusade to prove the authenticity of the unsigned work, but an exposure of the rarely mentioned inequalities in American society.

“The contrast between Horton’s trailer park life and the rarified ‘art world’ people she was dealing with is both striking and funny,” says Nico Mesterharm, Meta House director. The comedy genius is Horton herself, cussing her way from Texas to Tribeca, accumulating hard evidence of the painting’s authenticity along the way. “The whole art world is a fraud,” says Teri, and as she recounts her battles with the art world cognoscenti you kind of have to agree: on one side of the argument, Teri and an array of forensic evidence; on the other, a motley collection of supercilious aficionados. “If I were just a night watchman at the Museum Of Modern Art instead of the director you could dismiss my opinion,” opines one pompously; “It simply doesn’t sing like a Pollock!” shrills another. Tough luck, mate: with Pollock’s fingerprints all over it, the painting can sing like a canary for all Horton cares.

Which brings us to the man who left those fingerprints. For all the art crowd’s possessiveness over Pollock, the artist probably had more in common with fiery Horton than with the pseuds over at MOMA, a point which is appositely, if clunkily, made throughout the movie. “Pollock was an alcoholic and had a volatile personality,” explains Mesterharm. “Artists tend to be extreme. Great artists are even more extreme. I guess that is what makes them special and, on the other hand, hard to cope with. But in the end they are judged by their works, not by their behaviour.”

Like the best (worst?) of the Beat generation, Pollock’s behaviour was far from Sunday schoolish. Damaged, incendiary, alcoholic, he spent years holed up in his Long Island studio before dying in a drink-related car accident in which his mistress was also killed. But as Mesterharm notes, it is Pollock’s work and not his jerk that has been his legacy: his drip paintings have gone on to become some of the world’s most expensive, housed in museums worldwide.

Jose Pineda, also known as Frisco Tony, will be playing blues with his band The Beatniks after the documentary. He hopes that some of Pollock’s renegade spirit will imbue his set. “Jazz is often described as American classical music, [but it] was also a lifestyle that revolved around sex, drugs and civil disobedience. Blues was a child of jazz, developed in the same vein by black Americans. Jazz and blues both celebrate rebellion and civil rights, sexuality and the use of drugs and alcohol as sacraments to combat the power of the White Power Elite. The spirit of Jackson Pollack will be with us on Friday and I am sure he will be digging cool jazz, dancing to the blues, abusing his substances of choice and trying to pick a cool chick-muse.”

Substance abuse and pick-ups are of course entirely ancillary activities when watching art documentaries and appreciating Frisco Tony’s beats. Civil disobedience and rebellion are, as always for Advisor readers, mandatory (as is minding your Jackson Pollocks).

WHO: Teri Horton on the big screen, Frisco Tony and the Beatniks on the blues, DJ Nico on the decks
WHAT: Who The Fuck Is Jackson Pollock? screening followed by live blues, beat poetry and jazz
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm August 23
WHY: Definitely NOT a load of old Pollocks