Imagine Material
by Prak Dalin
Opening: Saturday, 11 November 2021, 6pm
Exhibition: 11 Nov – 3 Oct 2021
In English and Khmer
Sa Sa Art Projects
Imagine Material presents a new body of work by Prak Dalin. The artist explores and studies forms and scales with construction materials to create sculptures, installations, and digital images. Her work takes different forms utilising various materials such as bricks, cement, wood, iron, and chalk. The artworks presented are both a process and a result of learning, imagining, inventing, and expressing her thoughts and emotions through materiality rather than raising a specific topic.
Formally trained in architecture, Dalin’s artistic practice started with her fascination with the potential of materials and their properties in creating objects and sculptures. As a result, she consistently produces new artworks in different forms, expressing what she sees and feels about the living environments around her.
Dalin constructs a standing sculpture made of hundreds of construction bricks forming into a seemingly abstract figure for this exhibition. Orange is the color of a Buddhist monk’s robe; it also often references fire. The artist considers brick a kind of material that can bind, connect and bring awareness. These bricks inspire her to create this sculptural work playing with form and color.
Among the works shown are three smaller hollow sculptures made of thin concrete inspired by the shape of a reptile body, with a brick at one end imagined as the head. The artist studies the balance of a bending form, as the sculptures appear steadily standing with elegance.
As for six three-dimensional paintings, Dalin uses a thin layer of concrete and wooden board as the canvas and other materials imagined as the brush and paint, transforming them into images of various landscapes. She mainly uses chalk and cement, both made from the same substance but have very opposite qualities – one being firm and the other being very fragile. The artist lines up the chalk in rows as if many connecting lives are sprouting yet stuck within the concrete.
Imagine Material is a testament to Prak Dalin’s search for and opening up of her artistic vocabulary of imaginative forms founded on what she calls “giving freedom to the materials.” Whether a sculpture composed of bricks or three-dimensional paintings made of cement and chalk, Dalin plays with subtle forms turning materials and objects commonly used in construction into surprising images with new meanings. Through the encounter with these artworks, the audiences can also imagine with Dalin.
About the artist:
Prak Dalin (born in 1996, Kampong Cham, Province) lives and works in Phnom Penh. She graduated architecture from Royal University of Fine Arts (2019). She also took English for artists class by Vuth Lyno, Co-founder & Artist Director at Sa Sa Art Projects and Prumsodun Ok, Founder of Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA (2019); and Contemporary Art Class by Khvay Samnang, Co-founder of Sa Sa Art Projects (2018). She participated in colLABoration workshop with Multidisciplinary Art (MDA) students from Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Fine Arts at Sa Sa Art Projects (2020). As an artist and architect, she uses nature and construction materials to create sculptures and installations that appear as architectural structures, focuses on the impact of the city’s development. Her artworks are inspired by nature and the process of conveying into visual art and installation. She experiments with different art media and focused on unconventional aspects of materials.
Dalin’s group exhibitions include; Invisible Voices, Treeline Urban Resort (Treeline Artist Grants), Siem Reap (2020); Folding Concrete, Khmer Social House, Phnom Penh (2019); 10th Photo Phnom Penh. Festival, Message in Mind, TorTim Art Gallery and Café, Phnom Penh (2019); and Immerse, Sa Sa Art Projects, Phnom Penh (2019). She was in Pisaot, an artist in the residency program at Sa Sa Art Projects with an opening studio Merge (2019).Dalin was a recipicent of Treeline Artist Grants Cambodia (2020) and Dogma prize, Vietnam (2021).
More info: prakdalin.com
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