This year visual art, compared to theatre and film, has not been all that politically active despite 2014, with its mass protests, coup and subsequent outcry for freedom of expression being one of the most tumultuous years in recent history.While most galleries have retained their stance on putting on exhibitions purely for aesthetic purposes, it's exciting to see a few small art spaces that have been active in providing alternative venues for young artists. In this round-up, Life asks five curators to pick their favourite shows of the year.
Trance at Yet-Space
Chosen by Gridthiya Gaweewong, The Jim Thompson Art Centre's artistic director
For the past few years, contemporary art in Thailand has been focused on social and political issues. The audio and visual culture continues to fabricate social memory, while sentiments of the many political casualties and corresponding injustices become unconsciously embedded in public perception.
In this current political situation of fear, silence is the only option for artists to use abstract work to express their ideas.
In the art world, under martial law and "reform", people seek out the openness and autonomy of art projects. I finally found a small oasis in a little corner of an alley in Charunsanitwong area, a multidisciplinary exhibition "Trance", featuring collaborative works by two young Chiang Mai-based artists, Piyarat Piyapongwiwat and Anont Nongyao, who shrewdly presented the invisible and the unsayable. This show was overseen by young curator Lyla Phimanrat from VER Gallery, which collaborated with a newly-opened space, Yet-Space.
In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "trance" refers to a sleeplike state. In this show, artists displayed how our sleeplike state, hypnotised by the aural and visual, was constructed by nations/states via mass media. In Metamorphosis, the artists selected eight propaganda songs from countries ruled by dictators around the world and recomposed and rearranged them into easy listening piano music.
The process involved sending the music to friends from around the world and asking them for feedback. The works were returned and framed the basis of the multimedia installation, including sounds, video clips, text, photographs, objects and movie posters.
Objects in the show included a shelf containing pictures of Chinese family portraits during the Revolution, a screen showing an excerpt of a scene from the famous musical The Sound Of Music and so on. Upstairs, they deconstructed the propaganda songs and reinterpreted them into experimental audio, visual and interactive works, which served to immerse viewers into a purely abstract visual experience. "Trance" served as a relatable metaphor to the social condition we are facing in Thailand on a daily basis.
Rirkrit Tiravanija took previously exhibited artworks from 100 Tonson Gallery and put them on show to celebrate the 10th anniversary. "Ten Years After" at Tonson 100 Gallery
Ten Years After at 100 Tonson Gallery
Chosen by Gregory Galligan, Thai Art Archive's director and co-founder
Rarely does an exhibition achieve a perfect marriage between the artist's work, the current setting and its historical context. Rarer still is how such a marriage is attainable when the occasion for the show is the anniversary of a gallery or another such platform. This is why Rirkrit Tiravanija's show "Ten Years After", commissioned by 100 Tonson Gallery on the occasion of its 10th Anniversary, was such an amazing milestone.
Nobody knew what Rirkrit would come up with and even those who were familiar with his audience-participatory work wondered how he might rise to the occasion. He managed the task with real brilliance when he chose to recreate, in a unique fashion, one of the most important exhibitions of his early career, "Untitled (Free)" from 1992 and originally staged for 303 Gallery in New York City. Over two decades ago, Rirkrit stumped audiences by pulling everything out of the gallery's offices and placed the everyday items of tables, flat files, refrigerators and so forth front and centre for everyone to walk through. Turning our habitual constellation of perceptions and expectations of the gallery experience inside-out, Rirkrit made us question the very experience and tradition of gallery-going in the first place.
At 100 Tonson Gallery, Rirkrit reprised that moment in history and in his own life as an emerging artist in the aftermath of the Neo-Expressionist 1980s by doing much the same with 100 Tonson's own storage space. One person arriving at the show, clearly puzzled, could be heard muttering: "Huh? Where's the exhibition?" History was in the making all over again, and that's how it should be when we look back on what was most impressive in the year.
Threshold at Bridge Art Space
Chosen by Myrtille Tibayrenc, Toot Yung Art Center's artistic director
I didn't have much time to visit many exhibitions in Bangkok this year, but I was very glad to be able to escape from my own space in August and witness the opening of Bridge, a new avant-garde art space near Taksin Bridge with an impressive rooftop view of the "Ghost Tower" — Sathorn Unique.
For "Threshold", all floors were interesting with very eye-catching pieces, starting with works by Joe Delaney and Soichiro Shimizu on the ground floor.
I liked the idea of curating each floor in such a separate manner. Every level up was a surprise and my favourite was the fourth floor with a very amusing and beautifully made interactive installation by Lee Anantawat, inspired by Chinese praying sticks (which are actually more linked to luck, fortune and money-making than spirituality). I played with it for quite some time and it was really enjoyable to see art that didn't take itself too seriously and at the same time could deliver a multi-layered message on diverse topics of present day Thailand.
The combination of Lee's piece with the very minimal installation by Tada Hengsapkul further in on the same floor was a great choice. Tada's work was just a peephole of a closed door, through which you saw a sight of a psychedelic stroboscopic light. Both pieces together were striking in the sense that it was a critique of modern Thailand but delivered with great lightness and humour.
Concept Context Contestation: Art And The Collective In Southeast Asia at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre
Chosen by Dr Prapon Kumjim, head of Chulalongkorn University's The Art Center
What this exhibition was trying to do is very relevant to our country and others in this region. In Thailand, there are two main currents: modern Thai art, which is considered by some people decorative, and international contemporary art. My line is not modern Thai, and when you saw this regional networking [the exhibition was curated by a Singaporean, Indonesian and Thai with artists from many other countries within SEA], the output was fun and inspirational. It was interesting the way Thai curator Vipash Purichanont tried to put older and younger artists together and attempted to push Thai conceptual art to the international level.
Take Paphonsak La-or's installation for example. He put a bed in the middle of the art space with books that were once forbidden on the shelf. It's interesting, because it's paradoxical the way he put something that's very private in a very public space. Censorship is a very sensitive issue in our society, but it's impossible in this digital age. Paphonsak's work is relevant in the sense that it's a memorial of the past, reminding us that we are indeed from that prohibited period. Twenty years from now, it might be funny and even absurd to look back and see how words and thoughts were once prohibited.
Time Travelling — Surasi Kusolwong at Ratchadamnoen Contemporary Art Centre
Chosen by Bangkok Art and Culture Centre's head of exhibition department and curator Pichaya Suphavanij
'It is a very thin line, thinner than a piece of paper', a simple sentence as part of an excerpt on the wall is the beginning of the philosophical musings on time, work and the life of Silpathorn awardee Surasi Kusolwong at the Ratchadamnoen Contemporary Art Centre earlier this year.
"Time Travelling" was the title and from there it led us to various dimensions. In a perfect location at the centre towards the end of the walkway, five connected yet independent elements hold the narratives. First is an excerpt from a dialogue the artist had with his uncle referring to Tibetan meditation. Second is a picture of the artist's mother smiling, whilst holding a disintegrated umbrella in front of damaged piles of trash; the results of a recent flood, suggesting a simplistic view of life and what it is worth. Third is a video interview of Richard Feynman who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, speaking on how he is honoured every moment he discovers something new. Fourth is a neon sign that says 'It's either too late or too early', the sentence the artist said to a reporter upon discovering he had been awarded. And lastly, a nano-titanium refrigerator with its door left open, leaking out the cold air, the dry smoke and the light projecting out from the energetic cubical form speaks of the direction of width, length, depth and time.
The whole integrated work acts as an autobiography of the artist and negotiates the tension of the extremes: the positive and negative, past and present, and everything in between that keeps him moving forward. If it is to sum up a lifetime of work up to this moment, it narrates the logic, the mystery, the scientific and spiritual attitude with life as an essence.
