The latest exhibition at YenakArt Villa is rotten. Literally. Dried-up roses with stitched-up petals hang their heads dejectedly in a vase; a shrivelled lily flower with plastic petals sits sadly in the corner of the room; and in front of the gallery stands a large glass box filled with rotten and mouldy embellished bananas.
The works make you wrinkle your nose up with disgust, but they weren't like this two weeks ago. The flowers and the fruits were fresh and beautifully decorated; but time will do its work, and young artist Patipat Chaiwitesh will keep letting it do its work until they're rotten to the core.
Patipat's solo exhibition "Stitch Up", which runs until Aug 12, doesn't only have these rotting works on display. There are interesting technical French tapestry works, embellished taxidermies, paper pattern works, and living artworks as well -- all with a simple thread between them: tapestry.
"When I was studying tapestry [in France], you reach a point where you think that anything can be a loom," said Patipat.
An oeuvre of Patipat's development in the past two years, "Stitch Up" is an experimental and open-ended exhibition which turns ordinary found objects into other forms by using contemporary tapestry techniques. It draws attention to, and asks questions about the illusions and tampered images that people now face in their contemporary lives -- something that Patipat has been interested in for the past few years.
"The works that are the bananas and [taxidermied animals]; the name of the concept is actually 'Surgery'," he explained.
"It's quite direct -- talking about plastic surgery. I'm not commenting whether plastic surgery is right or wrong. Plastic surgery has sort of become pop culture now, so I'm asking a question as to why people do it? Do they do it because they want to change the perception of themselves? Or to change the way other people see them?"
With this topic in mind, Patipat started experimenting with universally known objects and applying his background in tapestry to change their look and form.
"I changed the perception of found objects," he said. "Because if you talk about people, everyone will have a different image of what a person looks like, but objects are all the same. When I design a new aesthetic to the object, people will have a different feeling and perspective about it. Objects like the banana can also symbolise sex and it's in the same realm as plastic surgery. You're just modifying some parts of your body."
"The concept with the flowers -- the true functions of flowers is to reproduce," he continued to explain. "The petals are to attract bugs. It's the same thing as your looks. In reality, the function of human beings is to reproduce and to keep reproducing. So I tried modifying flowers like [stitching] their petals or changing their perception."
It's a little tongue-in-cheek that Patipat lets his works rot after giving them a "facelift", even if he says that he's not commenting on whether plastic surgery is right or wrong. With plastic surgery so recent an invention, there still hasn't been proof of what the outcome might be years along the line, and his experiments might foreshadow something very unwarranted.
The taxidermied animals under the same theme were actually supposed to decay as well, however adjustments had to be made due to health and cleanliness concerns.
"So whatever can rot, I'll let it rot," he said with a chuckle. "In reality, some people like it -- some people don't like it. People ask why does it have to rot? But when you talk about aesthetics, it doesn't only talk about beauty. Aesthetics can be ugly and scary as well."
After working with materials that rot, Patipat wanted to experiment with another body of work that does the opposite. Displayed inside and hung outside the YenakArt gallery are a round wooden canvas and a northern Thai carpet entangled with growing green creepers. "In relation to the previous works, I wanted to experiment with something that wouldn't rot," he said. "I chose the creeper plants that the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration likes to decorate on the BTS poles. I wanted to change the context and bringing it into a gallery to see what people feel about it. However, it relates to tapestry as well. I found carpets from the North and undid them for the plant to go through, so it sewed itself onto the tapestry on its own."
And though it may seem like it, Patipat's artworks do not intend to comment on life and death -- considered to be an all too common and played out topic among artists in the modern period. "I don't want to talk about life and death too much [in the works]," he said, "So it focuses on changing perspectives and perceptions -- a topic that is, I believe, more contemporary."
The rest of the artworks, being the cute knitted cloth, the graphic paper design and chopstick sculptures, are a part of the artist's research and experimentation with tapestry.
"I like experimenting," he explained. "When I have a tangible topic to work with I start experimenting, and since it's experimental, some works do not turn out to be close to the topic that I'm talking about. [This solo exhibition] people get to see how I work, what my background is, and how I develop my works."
In all fairness, "Stitch Up" is not figuratively rotten at all. It's pretty fresh.
Bananas, 2017. Photo: Phasin Sudjai
Tilapia, 2017. Tapestry on preserved Tilapia fish. Photo: Phasin Sudjai
Safety Pins, 2017. Photo: Phasin Sudjai
