"Neang" Painting

Born November 11th 1963, Brussels, Belgium.



The face, whether in painting, photography or even cinema has always exercised on me a strong fascination.
It is thus naturally that I began my research with portraits, soon followed by photographic self-portraits, where the fictitious setting was mixing with real elements.
Photography however frustrated me very much in terms of limitation of space as well as material; I started therefore to cut out, reframe, giving new and oversized dimensions to these faces : the portrait, its essentiality, has finally carried it on to all the setting.
The only reason why I am still continuing my photographic research today is to enable me to work without the glance of an alive model frozen in its pose. In other words it gives me more freedom . My imaginary is then completely free, leaving me the necessary space to all the audacities, unbounded in the imagination of my research.
It is The being , its inside , which is slipping away from me and which I try to capture in these portraits , through the physical transformations caused by the light , the visual angle , the space in which it is evolving. The incapacity of really being able to seize it , trying to solidify it in a framed space , plane and restricted , is stimulating my research . In that sense that the portrait becomes the place of my reflection on the painting itself.