A Monthly column rounding up the best of the capital’s arts scene

A Monthly column rounding up the best of the capital’s arts scene

Introducing a new monthly column

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

A wide-eyed little girl leans heavily against a cushion, her face half buried in its comforting softness. It’s as if she’s hiding from reality, from whoever fired the shell or grenade that has punched a gaping hole in the wall behind the sofa she’s sprawled on.

Rania Matar’s Girl And The Rocket Hole.

That haunting image, simply entitled Girl And The Rocket Hole, is included in Lebanese photographer Rania Matar’s current exhibition at the Toot Yung Art Centre (runs until the end of the month). It’s from a series of black-and-white photos she has called “Ordinary Lives”, which are on display here alongside pics from two previous full-colour series of hers: “Girl In Her Room” and “L’Enfant-Femme”.

“It’s documentary pushed to the state of art,” says Toot Yung’s artistic director, Myrtille Tibayrenc, and this description holds true for many of the other Matar images displayed here, too. Another black-and-white image, Barbie Girl, is a particularly good example of this. It shows a little girl running with open arms towards the camera, and there’s a real cinematic feel to it because we can also see a woman in the same shot, presumably the girl’s mother, with her mouth wide open, presumably shouting something after her daughter, and, in the far background, the rubble of buildings damaged in some war or armed conflict. The message seems to be that innocence is perhaps the best kind of optimism.

While Matar’s work is about exteriors, what’s going on outside, another exhibition underway in Bangkok at the moment, “I Miss You Already” (continues until July 27) by Chinese photographer Shen Wei at H Gallery, is an exploration of the world within. It’s a series of nude self-portraits. One that immediately draws the eye shows Wei, one leg propped up on a table, head bent over, seemingly lost in thought, as he ponders his penis.

Some of us get embarrassed just looking at our unclothed selves in the bathroom mirror, so didn’t Wei feel shy, or even the slightest bit odd, snapping such intimate shots of himself? “It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “It was just a matter of when.”

Other photographs include a view, from behind and slightly to the side, of Wei bending over an imagined lover, and a close-up of his pubic hair flecked with crumbs from a Chinese biscuit he’s holding in his hand. One viewer observed that these images could be about sexuality, lust, or even greed (for the biscuit), but, looking at the exhibition as a whole, I see this as being very much about a clash between vulnerability and courage as the artist makes a journey of self-exploration.

Another interesting exhibition is just one floor up at H Project Space. It’s called “(detail)”, runs until July 6 and is being curated by English artist and curator Andrew Bracey who selected close-ups of sections of works by 118 contemporary artists from around the world and put them together to create a huge, site-specific collage. The result is not just about experimenting with the role of curator (who typically picks up fragments of ideas and thoughts and gives them a whole new set of meanings in a different context), but also furnishing a new experience, a new approach to art appreciation, for viewers.

In dialogue (albeit, coincidentally) with Bracey’s collage is Tao Zhou’s exhibition, “Green Sun”, at the BACC (where it’s due to wind up on June 29). In the paintings, photos and video he made during his residency here as the winner of the Han Nefkens/BACC Award for Contemporary Art, the close-up element seems to predominate regardless of the medium he uses.

His video interposes close-ups of subjects such as PDRC protesters in Bangkok with the faces of Chinese people in public squares in Guangzhou. This tactic not only obliterates all sense of geographic location or nationality, but seeing things up so close turns a documentary into visual art. With no clear storyline, each moment in the video becomes independent, standing alone with a beauty of its own.

The most captivating spectacle in town this month, however, comes in the form of music combined with a light installation and live “painting”. French dance company A.lter S.essio’s production of Loss, as part of the ongoing La Fete 2014, is very much visual art as performance.

Throughout this intense, 30-minute show, while the stage (as canvas) constantly changes as the lighting design alters and music colours the ambient mood, a pair of performers (Pichet Klunchun and Yum Keiko Takayama) “paint” with their physical movements. Watching movements that are sometimes rigidly choreographed and at other times spontaneously improvised, viewers are transported from a tranquil contentment to feelings of oppression and then lifted to a state of exultation. We may not be sure what it’s really all about, but it is felt with such great intensity that it is sufficient to satisfy most of us.   


Please send comments or news on art events to kaonap@bangkokpost.co.th.

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