Art Exhibition : Ties and Fragrant Lies 8 young Thai artists tap on the genre of figurative painting to reflect on the allure of urban life and expose its contradictions in a land best known for their export of fragrant rice, thousand smiles and spiritualism.
This exhibition launches a new generation of painting talents emerging out of renowned art institutions in Thailand such as Silpakorn University. It affirms the inexhaustible potentiality and enduring appeal of this age-old medium.
One East Asia Gallery in Singapore gathered eight young Thai artists under "Ties &
Fragrant Lies" exhibition, curated by Woho Weng and Joey Soh.
Exhibition period
4th June - 29 June 2013 , 6.30-9.30pm
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| Manit Srisuwan , “Deer Lady 3”, Acrylic on canvas,80 x 80 cm.,2013 |
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Manit Srisuwan , “Mental frame from subconscious reluctance No.7”(1), Acrylic on canvas,130 x 160 cm.,2012
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Manit Srisuwan , “Wilted flower ”, Acrylic on canvas,60 x 80 cm.,2013
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Worldly Ties and Living Lies in the Land of Smiles
Category - essays and articles
by Woho Weng -
The title of the exhibition Ties and Fragrant Lies is derived
from a play of words with Thai fragrant rice, Thailand’s most well-known export
noted for its delectable light aroma. It is an everyday staple in the diet of
many Asians. The subversion in rhyme however signals a departure from the
wholesome goodness image. The exhibition title encapsulates the criticality in
the paintings presented by eight young Thai artists who pry open the gentle and
virtuous façade of a country so often promoted by its tourism industry as the
Land of Thousand Smiles and devotional spiritualism. What they reveal instead
are the contradictions and vagaries of everyday urbanised life in current
times.
Context and curatorial framework
At the onset, the artists are clear-minded in their intent to put up an
exhibition to promote Thai art and culture. But their works fit in more as an
intimate contemplation than a loud nationalistic campaign. After all, they deal
with individualistic viewpoints and anecdotal observations concerning self and
their immediate environment, rather than grand subjects such as national
history and politics. What this exhibition offers is a topical look into a
group of home-bred Thai artists whose painting practices are freshly molded by
their local art academies and their psyche heavily shaped by religious
teachings namely through Buddhism, one of the three pillars of Thai society.
Born in the second half of the 1980’s all under 30, the artists are currently
undertaking or have just completed a post-graduate course in painting at
Silpakorn University in Bangkok. The university, founded in 1943, is
instrumental in bringing about modern art practices in Thailand. Then the Dean
of the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture, Silpa Bhirasri (aka Corrado Feroci,
an Italian sculptor before he adopted the name change) effected a turning point
in Thai art by introducing Western art and aesthetics into the curriculum of
Thai students. Yet at the same time, he encouraged his teaching staff and
students to retain their own culture and tradition and infuse them into their
artistic practices.1 The
transference of a hybridised model of making art becomes evident in the works
of this new generation of painters once the creative impulses of the artists
are framed by a spiritual sensibility centered on the notion of dharma
inculcated from young. What at first glance may seem like unrelated subjects
rendered in a Western academic style now fall neatly within three key tenets of
Buddhist teachings – insatiable desires and attachment to worldly pleasures,
misguided perceptions such as false ego and appearance and the illusion of a
good life, and pathways out of worldly attachment and delusion. Therefore,
reading the artists’ works through an analysis of iconography informed by their
religio-cultural context works like a universal key. It cracks open the
underlying connectedness of the paintings and unlocks their layered meanings.
This interpretation augments with the raw statements written in English by the
Thai artists about their concepts. The exhibition is essentially a snapshot of
a successive generation of young adults struggling to come to terms with the
physical world and their spiritual convictions.
The beast within
Urban life in a city is one flushed with easy access to every imaginable
opportunities and conveniences. It offers an abundance of livelihood and
lifestyle choices as well as materials and services to meet every desire and
taste of city dwellers and visitors. Yet beneath such outward show of opulence
and glitters, urban life is also littered with grits and traps. When a person
is faced with excesses and over-stimulated desires, what becomes of his or her
human nature? How does one contain the ‘beast’ within human nature? The artists
bring to light that things are not what they appear to be.
Anchalee Arayapongpanit (born 1985) mobilises an alter ego in
the form of an all-powerful woman who can capitalise on today’s easy access to
affluence and life opportunities to chart her own destiny. Her paintings are
larger-than-life portraits expressively done in her likeness with personae
inspired by youth, pop culture and social media. Striking a pose with large
penetrative eyes and pouting lips (identifiable with Angeline Jolie’s signature
look, a popular Hollywood actress), the lone figure in the portraits bears no
shades of the gentle and submissive demeanour commonly ascribed to Asian women
in a patriarchic society. In Anchalee’s own words, her characters are
“sometimes playful, sometimes fearsome, sometimes provocative”, seen in the
paintings as flexing a tattoo on her toned arm, clutching a semi-automatic
rifle or sliding up against a shiny-new motorbike in a tight leather outfit.
Yet in her outwardly bid towards self-empowerment, the alter ego appears too
self-indulgent in only satisfying her own desires and living up to her own
image. In the pair of portraits titled 007 and 27 (Fig. 1A & 1B) which
references the famed fictional British Secret Service agent and her current
age, she has attained a new level of self-sufficiency. She is now both the
groom and the bride. But this assuming of dual gender roles unexpectedly and
poignantly let slip a psychological fissure of a limited self which excludes
meaningful relationships with other people. There are also questions concerning
her assumed characters. The double may have over-zealously taken on the façade
of a foreign culture so much so that the liberated woman now looks like an
anime character or a game avatar in the age of entertainment and cyberspace.
While Anchalee’s femme fatale is rooted in the here and now,
Krissadank Intasorn’s muse acquires an antiquated mystic temperament.
Krissadank (born 1986) is acutely sensitised to critical moments of life’s
conundrums. His paintings capture the point before a rupture of latent desires
and prurient thoughts, contained during the light of day by moral codes and
cultural propriety but unleashed under the veil of the nocturnal through
dreams, fantasies and art. The person is literally split in body and soul. The
outcome of his or her choice is never settled – a liberation of spirit or a
descent to lawlessness? In his works, the artist takes on the perspective of a
bare-chested adolescent beauty, at once the seduced but also at risk of
becoming the seducer, on the cusp of awakening to her sexuality and prowess as
a self-determining woman or consummating in a frenzy of bodily and worldly
pleasures. This tension is accentuated by the artist’s rendering of figures
with traditional Thai tattoos and in Lanna art style done on indigenous
materials such as Sa (mulberry) paper and wood panel. The deliberate
appropriation of neo-traditionalism, pointing towards the stoicism of religion
and tradition, plays up against the easy corruptibility of human nature. In The
Red Full Moon and Tangle Song (Fig. 2A & 2B), the fair maiden has fallen to
the dark side. She becomes a seductress under the ripening of a bloodied moon
to ensnarl willing men with a luring musical instrument and a long mane of
serpent-like tresses. Even the tiger, a symbol of power and virility, is
incapacitated under her spell.
The Lanna demoness depicted in Krissdank’s paintings may as well
shed her human skin and flesh and what is left behind would be the skeleton of
a beast in Phansak Kaeosalapnil’s Passion in the Light work. In his latest set
of paintings, Phansak (born 1984) examines the phenomenon of duality embedded
in all entities via the notion of light and darkness to show the complexity of
human nature and experiences. Every entity is a potential carrier of
oppositional attributes, even in the plainest signifiers of white and black. In
the ‘white’ canvas titled Passion in the Light (Fig. 3A), it is no longer
registered as a site of goodness as it reveals the skeletal beast within
humans. In the ‘black’ canvas titled Passion in the Darkness (Fig. 3B), it does
not connote evil as it presents humans in their most vulnerable elemental form.
It is a play of semiotics by reversal of assumed associations. In human
experiences, people are drawn to pleasure without knowing its addictive effect.
Conversely, they are repelled by pain or unpleasant experience without
realising its value to teach them about compassion and empathy. Through this
diptych, the artist reveals two layers of meanings. At one level, he exposes
the falsity of surface appearance and forewarns the viewer not to take things
at face value. At another level, he embraces the positive and negative
attributes of an entity or experience as life-affirming forces.
Deprivation in the midst of
abundance
Here lies one of the greatest contradictions of urban life in a city. Despite a
place overflowing with people and materials, many city dwellers feel a sense of
emotional and social isolation and emptiness, a disconnection with their
environment and spirituality. There is a hidden catch in every choice.
Suriwan Sutham (born 1985) addresses representations of feminine
beauty in a consumerist culture, externalised through women dressed up in
jewellery, accessories and make-up. Covered under a cloak of luxurious goods, a
woman is made into an object of beauty herself. This outward presentation is
often internalised and becomes her sense of self-worth, identity and value. At
first glance, Suriwan’s paintings are pictorial frames of opulence, fitting as
retail advertisement for high-end lifestyle. However, the accessories are piled
on so heavily on the wearer that they literally bury her under like the
accoutrements of entombment. Instead of complementing her look and worth, they
empty her out and define her. In the Sleeping Beauty series of paintings (Fig.
4A, 4B & 4C), the woman with a perfectly made-up face displays no joy over
her overflowing physical assets. Instead, she appears comatosed and becomes an
inanimate object in a still-life painting. The pursuit of material possession
indeed works like a drug to the mind. Not only does the desire compel the whole
being to crave for one pleasurable high to another, it only numbs the mind to
other dimenisons of meaningful living. What is picturesque and alluring at
first turns out to be a forewarning against material obsession and vanity.
Manit Srisuwan (born 1985) goes a step further in representing
people’s conflicted state of mind in an affluent urbanized life. In his world,
the humans have morphed into a different creature. Manit’s paintings are deeply
contemplative and atmospheric. They show a retreat into an inner sanctum.
People, depicted as alone and pensive, are revealed as lifeless human casts
akin to mannequins seen in departmental stores or plaster models used for life
drawing. They lie sprawled on uniformly patterned floor littered with remote
organic objects, illuminated dimly with chiaroscuro effects. The paintings are
allegoric, referencing the relation of a person’s inner human existence with
the outside physical world. A human being can turn into an automaton of his or
her own desires and ambitions fuelled uncontrollably by the urban lifestyle and
its demands. However his works are not all bleak and pessimistic. The artist
has suggested a way out of this predicament– to take a moment of reverie, to
lie low and to stay grounded, to be connected with one’s human nature and
nature at large. In Wilted Flower (Fig. 5B), a decapitated Roman plaster head
stares forlornly at a ball of wilted chrysanthemum flower which shares its
dislocated state. In Deer Lady 3 (Fig. 5A), the woman figure’s head has
sprouted a pair of deer antlers while she looks pensively at a pair of
frangipani flowers strewn on the floor. She is taking time out to locate an
inner balance.
The path lost and the way out
Living in an urban city can also bring on a detachment from tradition and
culture, religion and spirituality, without which life can feel empty and purposeless.
Having an awareness of the ill-effects of urban life as shown in the above
sub-themes is a necessary first step towards a meaningful and fulfilling life.
Pruethinan Kamalas Na Ayudhaya (born 1987) is singular in his
vision to study and capture traditional Thai architecture. He focuses his
attention on the roof tiers and decorations of Buddhist temples in various
states of deterioration. Pruethinan’s paintings are a telescopic shot of these
structures taken from ground up and contrasted against the open sky. This
upward gaze is a form of reverence because he considers these buildings as
national treasures and the glory of a nation. There is beauty and value in
their wasted state. They mark the passage of time and hint at a poignancy that
even the houses of gods cannot escape the phenomena of impermanence. The state
of disrepair also directs attention to the urgency to conserve these national
and cultural heritages. The artist accentuates this urgent need by flitting
loose pieces of tiles and ornaments off the roofs of these temples. In his
latest Faith painting (Fig. 6), traditions and the need to preserve them take
on a mystical tone. The spire at one end of a roof tier is seen trusting
skywards while a sprinkling of yellow chrysanthemums rains downwards, both
framed against large concentric rings of yellow-tinted clouds. The halos of
ring clouds allude to a heavenly presence. The placement of the roof tier
against it accords an elevated status to Buddhist temples and traditional
architecture. Chrysanthemum flowers are a common offering for prayers. Their
withered state and loose petals suggest a lamentation of the plight of
traditions. The artist infers that it is a message from heaven which we mortals
can ill-afford to ignore.
In contrast to Pruethinan’s use of artefacts of historical and
cultural significance, Wilawan Saowang (born 1984) deploys a limited set of
common and unremarkable objects and processes – locks and rusting on doors and
gates – to invoke a complex web of notions relating to boundary, time and the
trespasses of time across boundaries, shifting perspectives of looking inside
out and outside looking in. In a simple freeze frame of a shiny padlock hooked
over a pair of rusty metal loops as seen in the Lock diptych paintings (Fig. 7A),
Wilawan draws out key subjects in Buddhist teaching – permanence and
impermanence of both physical and mental states, mental paradigm inverted at
the flick of a change of mind. What is seen as a locked enclosure can be undone
with the passage of time. A brand new padlock will eventually rust over time.
And while this duration may seem lengthy, it is but an instant when measured
over a millennium. The world as we have known it has existed eons of time
before this moment and will continue to exist many eons after. In Believe (Fig.
7B), the artist has layered over an additional element in her work by
interrogating he boundaries of traditions. Here, there is a double locking of
the door of a cabinet painted with traditional floral motifs. Its meaning is
ambiguous – does this signify a loss of traditions or freedom of expression
boxed in by traditions? Whichever is the case, the division is about to
collapse as the door and its hooks are worn out. Drawing up a boundary in the
first place, whether physical or mental, is both artificial and futile.
Likewise, Supparak Nopparat (born 1986) deals with profound
concepts with the most mundane subjects. She is interested in the natural laws
of life on Earth – the cycle of life and death, and geotropism (aka
gravitropism which refers to the growth of plants in response to gravity). For
the longest time, humankind has found in nature a representation of the ideal
and a resource of life’s greatest lessons. For instance, a life cycle is played
out at the cellular level of generation with decay and regeneration happening
in a blink of an eye. But industrialisation and modernisation have made us
disconnected with nature and blind to natural forces. The artist’s observation
is articulated in her meditative paintings of plants growing in abandoned sites
and along sidewalks. In My Care and Have a Good Dream (Fig. 8A & 8B), zinc
fences rust and eventually collapse in accordance to gravitropic law, while
shrubs and grasses covered under them twist their way out of these man-made obstacles
and defy gravity in accordance to their anti-gravitropic nature. It is an epic
interplay of life and decay performed at the commonest of unnoticed places.
Conclusion
The significance of this exhibition lies in what this new generation of Thai
painters collectively present. They tune into everyday life issues from their
immediate environment and consider them as worthy subjects for their art. They
turn inwards through their paintings to search at the essence of the matter,
instead of extending outwards to place their works on a larger political,
historical or national context. They have tapped on the seemingly inexhaustible
potentiality of painting to mark their struggles. Although the issues they
invoke are not new, they add on nuanced observations to the complexity of human
nature and experiences. What is pervasive is the presence of Buddhist philosphy
undercutting the creative impulses of these Thai artists. It gives a
differentiated inflexion to the painting practices in this region. Despite the
collective wisdom from elders and history, each generation must fight their own
battles and find their own footings in an increasingly shifting and complex
world. How these emerging artists develop from here – extend on their current
practices, carve out new paradigms or even challenge the practices of their
predecessors – will be a subject of considerable interest and for future
studies.
Woho Weng graduated from the MA Asian Art Histories programme in
2012. This is a curatorial essay that accompanies the exhibition Ties and
Fragrant Rice, co-curated by Woho Weng and Joey Soh. Ties and Fragrant Rice
will be shown at One East Asia, Singapore, from 4 June to 25 June 2013.
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