Phnom Penh: Luna Kol’s paintings transform memory and emotion into layered colour and texture, revealing traces of passage and lived experience rather than depicting scenes. The exhibition opening will be held on 28 May 2026 from 6 pm at The Gallerist. Offering the audience a rare opportunity to engage directly with the artist and experience the creative process behind her evocative works.
About Suspended Silence “Slowness as a Threshold” This new collection is born from silence, not as an absence, but as a necessary threshold. A pause in time to gather density, to organise itself before emerging. A suspended state, like a latent movement. “There are no static things; we simply become dotted lines.” For Luna KOL, colour emerges without premeditation. It is not decided but experienced. In this series, colours unfold through a dialogue between warmth and coolness, charging the canvas with strength and energy. Mixed with linseed oil, the pigments follow their own trajectory. They spread, collide, settle, or fade away, revealing accidents and depths that the artist does not seek to control.
The material continues its movement beyond the gesture itself. The surface thus becomes a place of transformation, where the paint itself participates in the act of creation. The Suspended Silence series is built upon a fragile balance in which nothing seeks to settle permanently. The places crossed, the movements experienced, seep into the material and silently alter its trajectory. The series then appears as a threshold: An extended moment in time where the painting still retains traces of the movement that once passed through it.
Dense without ever closing in on themselves, the works allow spaces of breath and silence to circulate. Within their fullness lies an invitation to contemplation, where slowness reveals invisible layers, like an inner suspension in which the gaze continues to wander beyond forms. The silence they carry does not conclude; it prepares, prolongs, and transforms.
For The Gallerist, presenting a series of abstract art means offering an experience that transcends linguistic and cultural boundaries. The interpretation of forms, colours, and techniques used by the artist arises through a personal and undefined emotional response. The dialogue created through the artwork between artist and viewer becomes an act of introspection without fixed definition, answering a search for balance and a representation of beauty beyond the concrete world.
Luna Kol is a French artist born in Cambodia. After the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, her family relocated to France. As she adjusted to a new culture, Luna discovered art as a way to heal and express herself. And that experience continues to inform her sensitivity to movement, cultural layering, and perception. Early in her career, Luna focused on figurative drawing, with women and nudes being her primary subjects. However, she later shifted her focus to abstract painting, which allowed her to explore a more direct relationship with colour, rhythm, and material.
Luna takes a unique approach to her painting, using exclusively oil paint pigments that she blends and transforms herself to create unique colours and textured surfaces. A constant thread running through Luna’s works is her connection to her background, particularly her experiences travelling abroad. Rather than depicting specific memories, her paintings translate the energy of places, encounters, and environments into visual compositions. Through shifting structures and layered surfaces, her work creates a sense of movement and
spatial depth.
Luna’s work is a testament to the power of art as a tool for healing, self-expression, and connection. In her own words, Luna explains more about her art: “My paintings relate to a reflection about myself, question marks, and emotions. I paint the same way I would write a music composition. I experiment with my senses, I play with pigments, I look for shapes, volumes, sequences, frequencies, and transitions.”
Luna Kol draws inspiration from the raw beauty of nature and its elements. Her paintings are like short poems, using shapes and colours to create balance and lift the spirit. By working with pure pigments and mastering her technique, she brings light out of the chaos of creation. The contrasts in her work are powerful, catching the eye and shining beyond the canvas. Her minimalist style avoids excess and focuses on the purest emotions. This “less is more” approach comes from her life experience and her clear, thoughtful view of the world. She often
suggests landscapes, a shore, a piece of land like traces left by time. Natural and earthy elements blend smoothly, while rich textures and strong colours give her paintings great emotional strength, somewhere between lyrical abstraction and material art. Her work crosses borders, drawing from both Western and Eastern cultures.
SOLO EXHIBITION
● 2026 : Capsule collection “Immersion” – meet the artist at The Gallerist,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
● 2025 : “Mémoire du Temps” solo exhibition at Galerie Lee, Paris, France
● 2024 : “Vibrations” solo exhibition at The Gallerist, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
● 2024 : “Between Land & Sea” solo exhibition at The Gallerist, Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
● 2020 to 2023 : Luna Kol Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal
● 2018 : “Luzy y Sombras” at Begemot Art Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
Group Show
● 2025 : “Landscape”, at Galerie Oia, Paris, France
● 2015 : Galerie Saint-Honore, Paris, France
Art Fair, event
● 2018 : Art Fair in London, UK
● 2017 : Art Fair in Malaga, Spain
● 2016 : Art Fair, Toulouse, France
Photo by: Supplied
