Thread

by Pen Robit

Exhibition opening: Friday 1 Feb 2019, 6:00 pm

Exhibition period: 1 Feb - 5 Apr 2019

This exhibition is supported by Rei Foundation

Thread presents two new series of painting by Pen Robit, marking a new step in the artist’s ongoing investigation of his artistic language with identity, iconography, and abstraction.
Anchoring on Krama, the traditional Cambodian scarf, as an object of study, Robit uses painting to weave, fold, and reconstruct forms in search of expressions that are freed from the boundary of the textile and nationalist imagination.

Robit’s practice started with exploring colours, forms, and movements in painting. His work has been both figurative and abstraction, often commenting on social realities. His interest in Krama started in 2011 as he observed how this ubiquitous scarf is revered as a national identity while masking an underlying social hierarchy: those who wear Krama are still largely connected with provincial life and working class. Robit’s interest later resulted in a solo exhibition titled Krama at Romeet Contemporary Art Space in 2013. In this body of work, eleven large-scale paintings featured elder portraits with Krama wrapped around their heads or necks. The work was achieved through thick layers of lines made from drip painting of black, white and red enamel.

Robit’s work subsequently became more and more abstract as he further explored drip painting. He described that period as full of energy yet with anxiety as he was seeking freedom in his practice while navigating the art world. At times, he recycled canvases by painting over his previous works. A desire to animate and perform also led Robit to explore live painting and performance.

After exploring various mediums and techniques in painting, Robit recently returned to the basics: paintbrush. In this exhibition, two bodies of brushwork are presented. Untitled (2018) is a series of twenty small study-like paintings on paper in which the artist revisits Krama portraits. This time, however, human faces or figures completely disappear, leaving only images of Kramas in semi-abstract forms. Folded and tucked in various shapes of different colors, these textiles appear to be hovering against a dark background as if calling for attention. What recurring in each of these paintings are a patch of camouflage and a few red drips. The striking juxtaposition of the invisible figures who wear Krama and the attached camouflage and red stains seems to ambiguously allude to the relationship between military power, struggle, and peasantry.

In a separate body of work, Thread (2018), a series of seventeen paintings, Robit proposes a further departure from identifiable forms toward abstraction of grid structure like a close-up study of the fabric. The lines are not perfectly straight nor seamless, but rather slightly wavy and uneven like the nature of loosely knitted textile. Line by line through his brush, the artist acts like a weaver patiently constructing the interlacing threads. He describes this process as a way to calm and control himself. It allows him to slow down, meditate and focus: one thread of brush at a time in a controlled yet loose manner. Through this process of a close examination that Robit strips off social codes attached to Krama in order to open up a new passage, or for him a kind of freedom. For example, in Thread – Blue (2018), one can imagine a view of the sky full of stars through a window grill.

Thread presents a moment of reflection in an artist’s practice as a productive mode of artistic enquiry. Robit’s return to the basics of painting and his attention on interweaving lines through paintbrush reflects his journey of unlearning and relearning as an artist. It is also a process through which an opportunity for new possibility is given rise to, perhaps one that evades the politics of form and the grid of nationalism.