Catalogue Than Sok "Les Formes de l'Eau"
Nous sommes très heureux de présenter ce mois-ci une exposition consacrée à l'artiste Cambodgien Than Sok intitulée "Les Formes de l'Eau" à la Galerie Lee , et dont la commissaire est Erin Gleeson.
C'est la première fois que cet artiste cambodgien majeur expose en France. Nous montrerons une série de compositions "all-over" à l'acrylique présentant des motifs répétés sur toute la toile qui suggèrent l'eau sous tous ses aspects. Le titre de la série fait référence au Kbach, l'art traditionnel khmer de l'ornementation décorative, transformé par Sok en une méditation sur la nature et sa possible destruction.
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3 - 26 février 2022
Nous sommes très heureux de présenter ce mois-ci une exposition consacrée à l'artiste Cambodgien Than Sok intitulée "Les Formes de l'Eau" à la Galerie Lee , et dont la commissaire est Erin Gleeson.
C'est la première fois que cet artiste cambodgien majeur expose en France. Nous montrerons une série de compositions "all-over" à l'acrylique présentant des motifs répétés sur toute la toile qui suggèrent l'eau sous tous ses aspects. Le titre de la série fait référence au Kbach, l'art traditionnel khmer de l'ornementation décorative, transformé par Sok en une méditation sur la nature et sa possible destruction.
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3 - 26 février 2022
This critical mimicry is central to Than Sok’s Kbach Teuk for Batia Sarem. Eachof the eighteen canvases are saturated in monochromatic and blended colorvariations. While some colors reference the artist’s experience of differentwaters – from the red-brown of the Mekong River in rainy season, to the bluesof the sea, greens of marsh and yellow-browns of mangrove; other colors payhomage to water as found painted in temples – either aged and faded, restoredor newly created. Sok has overlaid, as if to infuse each color – each water body– with unique character, through delicate, rhythmic lines that are drawn fromwater’s interdependent lifeforms. Our amphibian and plant relatives, such assnail and snake, water lily and hyacinth, as well as unseen relations that movewater as waves or tides, inform and give form to water. In each creation, kbachteuk becomes an all-over composition, an immersive pattern, one that shiftsbased on the viewers position and proximity to the painting, as with wateritself – always in motion, whether perceptible to us or not.Than’s approach to expanding the canon of kbach teuk feels especiallyreverent considering water’s dominant role in Cambodia, throughout time. Itis believed that water and its innovative management for both irrigation andspiritual means was essential to the making and maintaining of the largestpre-industrial city in the world: Angkor.³ Prior to coloniality in Cambodia,the monarch owned land, while water was unowned and collectively shared.Whole cities, including residential structures, were built stilted along theriverbanks or floating on the river itself.Life for humans, animals and plants alike has been sustained in Cambodiaspecifically in relation to the expansive Mekong River, which connects theTibetan Qinghai plateau glaciers to the South China Sea through lands currentlydivided into six nations. Monsoon rains and snowmelt cause the Mekong Riverto flow into Cambodia’s Tonle Sap River, at the sacred Chaktamouk confluencein Phnom Penh, with such force that the latter reverses its flow and fills theTonle Sap Lake near Angkor Wat. The lake greatly expands by the river’sreversal, dispersing sediment, supporting wetlands, fisheries, rice-growingareas, animal migrations, and so much more. 4When writing this reflection, I came across the manuscript, Water and Light:A Cambodian Journey of the Mekong by Georges Groslier, founder of Écoledes arts Cambodgiens and the National Museum of Cambodia. I hopefullyexpected a study on the title’s eponymous elements from a committed3B.P. Groslier, 1979. “The Angkorian Hydaulic City: Exploration or Over-Exploitation of the Soil?” Translated by Terry Lustig andCristophe Pottier. Bulletin de L’École Français d’Extrême Orient 66: 161-202.4Cambodia’s hydraulic histories are well documented. Here, from Genealogy of Bassac. 2021. Ed. Brian McGrath and Pensereypanga.Terreform, 2021: Pen Sereypagna. “Earthworks, Sand and Gambling: An Introduction to Phnom Penh Atlas.” 34-43. andShelby Doyle. “Chaktamuk: The Hydrology of the Four Faces.” 82-9920
documentarian of Khmer forms, yet instead it lamented localization practicesin temple painting and ornamentation, whose gates were viewable from theriver along its banks. Groslier’s relationship to the water subjects it mostly as ameans to elsewhere, yet there is one particular description that acknowledgesthe river’s relationality beyond humans, as it “flows on into the sky and isfilled with it”. 5 I write this on the homelands of the Dakhóta Oyátu, Mní SótaMakhóčhe, meaning Land Where the Water Reflects the Clouds. Also known asLand of 10,000 Lakes, though there are thousands more, including Gichigami,the largest freshwater lake in the world, and Omashkoozo-zaaga’igan, theheadwaters of the Mississippi River. During three of four seasons, when thewaters are not frozen, we physically experience the Dakhóta name of the landswhen the sky worlds are mirrored in the waters.“As It Is Above, It Is Below”, a teaching grounded in critical mimicry, isshared across many cultures, and acknowledges intimate relations betweendiffering realms. Kbach Teuk creates a visual enmeshment of water’s layeredand connected worlds. Than’s paintings are surface, and water’s surface(unlike most other surfaces ornamented with kbach) reveals depths unseenand unknown. While Cambodia’s unique, natural, ancient, and generoushydraulic systems – like many across the earth – are increasingly vulnerable toanthropocentric nationalisms and neocolonialisms, Than Sok resists replicatingwater in relation to its demise, or it’s colonial holding patterns. 6 The paintings’undulating kbach act as sensuous grids 7 and sentient nets of cohabitation andinterdependence. Responsive to past and present with future in mind, KbachTeuk are also technologies of knowing, capable of instigating greater intimacy,consciousness and relationality with water’s life and water as life.Erin GleesonJanuary 20225Georges Groslier.1929/2016. Water and Light: A Cambodian Journey of the Mekong. DatASIA.6Jessica L. Horton and Kanet Catherine Berlo. “Beyond the Mirror, Indigenous Ecologies and ‘New Materialisms’ in ContemporaryArt”, Third Text, January 13, Vol 27, Issue 1, 17-28.7Lucy Lippard. 2021. I See/You Mean. Dedication page. New Documents, Los Angeles, CA.21
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This critical mimicry is central to Than Sok’s Kbach Teuk for Batia Sarem. Each
of the eighteen canvases are saturated in monochromatic and blended color
variations. While some colors reference the artist’s experience of different
waters – from the red-brown of the Mekong River in rainy season, to the blues
of the sea, greens of marsh and yellow-browns of mangrove; other colors pay
homage to water as found painted in temples – either aged and faded, restored
or newly created. Sok has overlaid, as if to infuse each color – each water body
– with unique character, through delicate, rhythmic lines that are drawn from
water’s interdependent lifeforms. Our amphibian and plant relatives, such as
snail and snake, water lily and hyacinth, as well as unseen relations that move
water as waves or tides, inform and give form to water. In each creation, kbach
teuk becomes an all-over composition, an immersive pattern, one that shifts
based on the viewers position and proximity to the painting, as with water
itself – always in motion, whether perceptible to us or not.
Than’s approach to expanding the canon of kbach teuk feels especially
reverent considering water’s dominant role in Cambodia, throughout time. It
is believed that water and its innovative management for both irrigation and
spiritual means was essential to the making and maintaining of the largest
pre-industrial city in the world: Angkor.³ Prior to coloniality in Cambodia,
the monarch owned land, while water was unowned and collectively shared.
Whole cities, including residential structures, were built stilted along the
riverbanks or floating on the river itself.
Life for humans, animals and plants alike has been sustained in Cambodia
specifically in relation to the expansive Mekong River, which connects the
Tibetan Qinghai plateau glaciers to the South China Sea through lands currently
divided into six nations. Monsoon rains and snowmelt cause the Mekong River
to flow into Cambodia’s Tonle Sap River, at the sacred Chaktamouk confluence
in Phnom Penh, with such force that the latter reverses its flow and fills the
Tonle Sap Lake near Angkor Wat. The lake greatly expands by the river’s
reversal, dispersing sediment, supporting wetlands, fisheries, rice-growing
areas, animal migrations, and so much more. 4
When writing this reflection, I came across the manuscript, Water and Light:
A Cambodian Journey of the Mekong by Georges Groslier, founder of École
des arts Cambodgiens and the National Museum of Cambodia. I hopefully
expected a study on the title’s eponymous elements from a committed
3
B.P. Groslier, 1979. “The Angkorian Hydaulic City: Exploration or Over-Exploitation of the Soil?” Translated by Terry Lustig and
Cristophe Pottier. Bulletin de L’École Français d’Extrême Orient 66: 161-202.
4
Cambodia’s hydraulic histories are well documented. Here, from Genealogy of Bassac. 2021. Ed. Brian McGrath and Pensereypanga.
Terreform, 2021: Pen Sereypagna. “Earthworks, Sand and Gambling: An Introduction to Phnom Penh Atlas.” 34-43. and
Shelby Doyle. “Chaktamuk: The Hydrology of the Four Faces.” 82-99
20
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