“Cambodia: Cuts & Colour” by Mathias Muehle

The German painter and printmaker Mathias Muehle has lived in Phnom Penh since January 2023. Muehle has participated in many exhibitions in Germany, France, Kenya, and Indonesia since the beginning of the 80th. We are pleased to present his exhibition & first solo show in this country, “Cambodia: Cuts & Colours”. The pictures in the show at Meta House Gallery are a selection from recent artworks produced in Phnom Penh of everyday impressions of his stay in Cambodia. The basis of his cuts and prints are commonplace, inconspicuous, and sometimes even banal objects and scenes of ordinary daily life. For the creation of his artworks, he uses partly his own drawings and sketches as well as photographic snapshots or found images from different media. Newspapers, magazines, or the internet are included. All pictures showcased in the exhibition are lino or wood cuts printed on acrylic glass and combined with painting. Having no specific subject in mind., it is a mixture of scenes of bathers on the seaside, motorcycle or tuk tuk drivers in Phnom Penh or a view of everyday objects like lotus flowers or advertisement signs; what appears every day to one person can appear as bright and fascinating subject to another. The overall commonality of all pictures in the exhibition is its strong focus on using bright colours and Muehle’s technique of combining artistic mediums to produce the images. To create his pictures, the artist combines unique and sometimes amusing printing techniques of painting on acrylic glass. In a first step, the subject of the picture is printed with oil paint from a wood or lino cut on the back side of an acrylic glass plate. The printing is done without a printing press, which gives the print a painterly quality. The glass plate is just placed on top of the coloured printing block and pressed using the weight of the artist stepping on top of it, and sometimes dancing on it with friends. This gives every artwork a unique difference from the previous print. After the printing, the artist applies a second step of oil, household, or acrylic paint to the parts of the glass which are not covered by colour from the printing process. He does this by dripping, rolling, throwing, or brushing the paint onto the picture until the whole glass is completely covered from behind with four to ten or even more layers of paint. Since every copy of a subject is printed and painted in different colours, each one is an original. None of the stained-glass pictures is an ordinary wood or lino-print from an edition because every print of an edition of two to sometimes ten prints doesn’t look exactly alike. After printed once in a small edition, the artist also plays around with the arrangement of the print blocks to create varying scenes and images depicting beach life for example or of other aspects of everyday life. We are proud to present Muehle’s first solo show in Cambodia and look forward to seeing you at the opening or during the following month. The show runs from Tuesday 13th of February until Sunday, 10th of March 2024, and can be seen during regular opening hours of Meta House Phom Penh.