Juxtapoz Magazine – Andrew Hem is the “Reviver”

Ascaso Gallery is delighted to announce Reviver, a solo exhibition of get the job done by Los Angeles artist Andrew Hem, opening June 30. Known for his unearthly shade aesthetic and a singular approach to portraiture, Hem weaves psychological narratives all over figures inhabiting spectacular landscapes and twilight cityscapes, utilizing these options to express states such as ponder, resilience and interconnectedness, and on the other hand, guilt, turmoil and alienation.

This entire body of work is a reflection on Hem’s changeover into fatherhood, and the conflicts and traumas he knowledgeable in his youth that he hopes to avert in his son’s future. In Hem’s perform, levitation signifies shifting the path, selecting a various course from the one particular culture expects of us, and reflections — mirrored in the h2o, shimmering on shiny material, gleaming on soaked pavement — counsel that every little thing that happens all around us has an influence on us that can resonate onto foreseeable future generations, until we consciously sidestep the errors of heritage. Reflections also give hints about the figure’s internal lifestyle — just one pair of mirrored figures has only a solitary reflection, yet another reflection satisfies your eye though its resource stays introspective, and a 3rd issue throws a distorted reflection, implying internal demons. 

Expanding up in a tough neighborhood the place he and his loved ones ended up the only Asians, Hem remembers emotion an overpowering sense of isolation as a youngster. Considering that the only illustration of people like himself he noticed in well known culture was in anime and martial arts movies, he embraces those people aesthetics, but re-envisions them as an inclusive milieu where adult men of all races are noticed as creative, thoughtful and susceptible, and women of all ages are explained not as passive aesthetic objects, but as wonderers, adventurers and warriors. Conscious that his possess son under no circumstances encounters that cultural isolation, Hem continuously strives in his do the job to conjure a planet that does not nevertheless exist, where no a single is an outcast and anyone, no issue how distinctive they are, is approved. 

About the Artist:
Born throughout his parents’ flight from Cambodia in the wake of the Khmer Rouge genocide, Andrew Hem grew up poised in the balance concerning two cultures — the rural animistic culture of his Khmer ancestors, and the dynamic urban arts of the hard Los Angeles community where by his family inevitably came to rest. He received his BFA from Art Faculty Heart of Style, and went on to have solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, London and Paris. His community art commissions incorporate a courthouse mural and a medical centre mosaic for the Los Angeles County Section of Arts & Tradition, and mural installations in the Oakland Museum of California, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Japanese American Nationwide Museum.