We are pleased to present a solo booth of new work by Sopheap Pich for Art Basel Hong Kong. Widely considered to be Cambodia’s most internationally prominent contemporary artist, Pich has been featured in numerous international museum exhibitions and biennials in Asia, Europe, Australia, and the United States. Currently, his work is on view in The Art of Our Time: Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collections at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Medium at Large at the Singapore Art Museum. In 2013, Pich presented a highly acclaimed solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and in 2012 his work was featured in a room sized installation at Documenta (13) in Kassel, Germany.

Born in Battambang, Cambodia, in 1971, Pich received his training in the USA (BFA, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and MFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago), before moving to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2002. There he began working with local materials – bamboo, rattan, burlap from rice bags, beeswax and earth pigments gathered from around Cambodia – to make sculptures inspired by bodily organs, vegetal forms, and abstract geometric structures. Pich’s childhood experiences during the genocidal conditions of late 1970s Cambodia had a lasting impact on his work, informing its themes of time, memory, and the body. His sculptures stand out for their subtlety and power, combining refinement of form with a visceral, emotive force.

For Art Basel Hong Kong, Pich will debut a new series of Wall Structures, scaffolding-like grid forms that explore the rhythms of line and void, as well as works inspired by organic forms, some incorporating carved stone elements for the first time. Later this year, he will present a solo exhibition of the new work at our gallery in New York (Oct. 29–Dec. 23).

Pich’s work is included in such museums collections as: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; M+, Museum for Visual Culture, Hong Kong; Singapore Art Museum; Queensland Art Gallery; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Reviews and feature articles about Pich have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, ArtNews, Art Newspaper, Asian Art News, Flash Art, New York Times, Orientations, Wall Street Journal. In 2014, Art Asia Pacific called Pich “the Southeast Asian artist to watch at the moment.”