[05 April, 2013, HONG KONG] – Subjective Truth, Contemporary Art from Thailand is a special project curated by Southeast Asia specialist Iola Lenzi, presenting artists Sutee Kunavichayanont, Tawatchai Puntusawasdi, Michael Shaowanasai, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit and Prapat Jiwarangsan. The exhibition is part of the exciting program line-up of 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, which coincides with its participation in the first edition of ART BASEL HONG KONG. The exhibition will run from 20 May to 20 July at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery Central.
Contemporary Thailand has never been more polarized. The country embodies paradox: for outsiders it represents all that is serenely Buddhist. But from inside, it is perceived by many Thais as politically, socially and even spiritually dysfunctional. Bangkok, the City of Angels, is simultaneously booming and burning, affluent Thais partying in the capital’s sky-scraping night-clubs, while Red and Yellow shirts clash on the streets below. Social media speak for the nation, fiction and reality tangled into one on facebook, streams of contradictory truths disseminated via twitter. In Subjective Truth, curated for 10 Chancery Lane Gallery by Southeast Asia specialist Iola Lenzi, six Thai artists grapple with their version of today’s Thailand.
ARTISTS IN THE SHOW -
Prapat Jiwarangsan (b. 1979 ) Born in Bangkok, Prapat Jiwarangsan is a multi-media artist and film-maker who graduated in 2011 with a Masters in Fine Art from The Royal College of Art, London. Taking a particular interest in history, politics and nationalism, Prapat’s recent work examines the Thai monarchy and its critical place as one of the country’s most revered but also culturally and politically problematic institutions. Prapat has exhibited in London and Thailand, his work recently featured at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in the group exhibition ‘Politics of Me’. Prapat currently works and lives in Chiangmai, Thailand.
Sutee Kunavichayanont(b. 1965) Sutee Kunavichayanont was born in Bangkok, graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Silpakorn University in 1989, and later obtained a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of Sydney. Sutee’s practice is noted for its layered conceptual approach as much as for its ability to engage a wide audience through participatory strategies, his desk installation History Class of 2000, and his inflated latex series, two of the Southeast Asian contemporary canon’s most famous and well-loved pieces. Thematically, his work reflects the rapid social, economic and political changes that have affected Thailand since the 1990s, the artist using his art to critically probe nationalism, power, identity, history and cultural convention in Thailand and beyond. Producing pieces in a wide variety of media, the artist mines familiar formal languages to engage the viewer in a playful examination of complex questions. Since 1986, the artist has exhibited widely in Thailand, Singapore, Korea, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States. Sutee’s art is in major institutional collections including the Mori Art Museum, The Queensland Art Gallery, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Singapore Art Museum, and KOC Foundation, Istanbul. As well as making art, Sutee is a curator and a lecturer at Silpakorn University. The artist works and lives in Bangkok.
Tawatchai Puntusawasdi(b. 1971) Tawatchai Puntusawasdi produces architectural three-dimensional sculpture in hard-wood, slate, organic fibres, and metal. In his Tilted series, ongoing since 2002, the artist plays with perception to challenge audiences’ understanding of volume and space, so prodding us to consider philosophical and spiritual questions. A student of the seminal Thai artist Montien Boonma (1953-2000), Tawatchai marshals formal elegance and grandiose scale to produce works that if cerebral, are always underpinned by pure visual seduction. Tawatchai has shown at the Venice and Sydney Biennales and has twice been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.
Michael Shaowanasai(b. 1964) Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Michael Shaowanasai is one of Thailand’s most socially and culturally engaged artists. He works across a broad spectrum of media including performance, photography, video, film, painting, and installation. Known for his iconic cross-dressing monk Portrait of a man in habits, Michael is a versatile artist whose conceptual pieces, often text-based, are effective for their aesthetic brio and formal command. With degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA), and living alternately in the United States and Thailand, Michael bridges cultures producing works that if couched in today’s Thailand, effortlessly communicate humanistic ideas to a global audience. Shaowanasai has been exhibited in Asia, Europe (Venice Biennale 2003), Australia and North America and his film and video works include The Adventure of Iron Pussy (2003), which was screened at Tokyo International Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, and the Melbourne International Film Festival, among others. Michael Shaowanasai is represented in several institutional collections including the Singapore Art Museum.
Manit Sriwanichpoom (b. 1961) Manit Sriwanichpoom is one of Thailand’s leading photographic artists, as well as one of Southeast Asia’s most internationally exhibited. He is best known for his still-ongoing Pink Man series, begun in post-Asian Crisis Thailand of the late 1990s. Operating as an ironic and sometimes pathos-injected critique of consumer culture in Thailand and wider Asia, Pink Man probes Thailand’s social concerns and erased histories of recent decades. Other series, including the iconic black and white Waiting for the King (Standing & Sitting) of 2006, provide a critical examination of Thai national institutions. Manit is particularly interested in Thai history and his country’s political development of the last few decades. Appropriating others’ images as well as using his own photographs as documents, Manit has created an original body of work that reveals Thailand in all her contemporary socio-political complexity. Manit has participated in a number of prominent international exhibitions including ‘Cities on the Move’ and the 2003 Venice Biennale. He is the 2007 recipient of Japan’s prestigious Higashikawa Overseas Photographer Award. Manit is represented in the Singapore Art Museum, The Queensland Art Gallery, and the KOC Foundation, Istanbul, among others. He lives and works in Bangkok.
Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (b. 1984) is a Bangkok-based film-maker whose shorts examine themes of inclusion/ exclusion, alienation, and choice to illuminate the complexity of today’s Thailand. Sensitively shot, their protagonists’ narratives poetically framed against Thailand’s contemporary socio-political reality, Nawapol’s cinematographic essays have been included in international festivals in Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. His feature film 36 won the New Currents Award at the 2012 Busan International Film Festival.
ABOUT THE CURATOR -
Iola Lenzi is a Singapore-based lecturer, critic, and researcher of contemporary Southeast Asian art. She takes a synthetic view of regional practice, her numerous exhibitions throughout Southeast Asia examining Southeast Asia’s social, cultural, and political landscape of recent decades. She is a lecturer in the Asian Art Histories MA programme of Singapore’s Lasalle-Goldsmiths College of the Arts, a contributor to international art journals and anthologies, and a regular participant in symposia on Asian art and culture. She is the author of Museums of Southeast Asia (Thames & Hudson 2005) and a regional correspondent for Asian Art, London.
ABOUT 10 CHANCERY LANE GALLERY
Since 2001, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery explores both emerging and historically important movements in art in the Asia Pacific. Working with curators and having a strong curatorial team in house, the gallery aims to bring exhibitions that take time, research and have impact on the arts in the region with an international approach to travel exhibitions. 10 Chancery Lane Gallery is committed to play a major role in documenting the development of art within the Asia pacific region by holding more survey exhibitions by country or theme of both emerging and mid-career artists, talks, forums and publishing books that bring together the individual historical context with the arts development within Asia. The gallery focuses on Asia however keeps its eye on international opportunities from the world bringing the need for international cultural appreciation to Hong Kong.
