Juxtapoz Magazine – Andrew Hem is the “Reviver”

Ascaso Gallery is pleased to announce Reviver, a solo exhibition of do the job by Los Angeles artist Andrew Hem, opening June 30. Recognized for his unearthly shade aesthetic and a singular strategy to portraiture, Hem weaves emotional narratives about figures inhabiting breathtaking landscapes and twilight cityscapes, using these configurations to convey states this kind of as speculate, resilience and interconnectedness, and on the other hand, guilt, turmoil and alienation.

This human body of work is a reflection on Hem’s changeover into fatherhood, and the conflicts and traumas he skilled in his youth that he hopes to avert in his son’s potential. In Hem’s work, levitation represents changing the route, choosing a various course from the a person modern society expects of us, and reflections — mirrored in the drinking water, shimmering on shiny cloth, gleaming on wet pavement — advise that every little thing that occurs all over us has an impact on us that can resonate on to long run generations, except if we consciously sidestep the blunders of historical past. Reflections also give hints about the figure’s internal everyday living — one particular pair of mirrored figures has only a solitary reflection, a further reflection satisfies your eye when its supply continues to be introspective, and a third subject matter throws a distorted reflection, implying inner demons. 

Expanding up in a hard community the place he and his family were the only Asians, Hem remembers emotion an overwhelming perception of isolation as a kid. Since the only representation of folks like himself he noticed in well-liked tradition was in anime and martial arts films, he embraces all those aesthetics, but re-envisions them as an inclusive milieu where guys of all races are found as innovative, thoughtful and susceptible, and females are explained not as passive aesthetic objects, but as wonderers, adventurers and warriors. Conscious that his personal son under no circumstances activities that cultural isolation, Hem continually strives in his do the job to conjure a entire world that doesn’t nonetheless exist, exactly where no 1 is an outcast and anyone, no make a difference how different they are, is acknowledged. 

About the Artist:
Born through his parents’ flight from Cambodia in the wake of the Khmer Rouge genocide, Andrew Hem grew up poised in the balance between two cultures — the rural animistic modern society of his Khmer ancestors, and the dynamic city arts of the difficult Los Angeles neighborhood where by his family eventually arrived to relaxation. He obtained his BFA from Art College Heart of Structure, and went on to have solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, London and Paris. His general public art commissions incorporate a courthouse mural and a professional medical middle mosaic for the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Society, and mural installations in the Oakland Museum of California, the Worcester Artwork Museum, and the Japanese American Countrywide Museum.