The works in “Synthesis”, on display at Chulalongkorn University’s The Art Center, are best enjoyed individually. From a massive acrylic painting which playfully questions the Thai education system, geometric abstraction portraying urban landscapes to a dead rat stuffed and mounted, the show isn’t exactly “the act of combining separate things, ideas etc into a complete whole”, as the title suggests.
“I didn’t set the structure of the show that way,” said curator Korakot Duangkao. “The show is not theme-based but all the artists are around the same age, in their early 30s, and I want viewers to see the ideas of artists at this same stage in their lives.”
Korakot added that the young artists exhibition is naturally an exciting place to look for the latest movement in art and “Synthesis”, she said, “will certainly reconfigure Thai and Southeast Asian art from perspectives of young Thai artists”.
But comprising of just artists from Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, “reconfiguring Thai and Southeast Asian art” is maybe a little too ambitious a notion. The idea of a “thesis show” pops up but this is by no means because the works are in any way amateurish, but it seems like a collection of the best works by artists whose interests are entirely different.
Recalling Warhol’s fascination with front page car crash images in the early 60s, Pattana Chuenmana’s more close-up shots eliminate the sense of tragedy and present his photography almost as an abstract painting in which those crushed and torn metal structures serve as accidental lines and colours. In Krisada Suvichakonpong’s photography series, however, an image presented is rather worn out. Titled “Cabinet Of Curiosity”, 20 photos are arranged together and, with frames, they look like windows in a big cabinet with a collection of stuffed animals on display.
“Krisada creates a metaphor between the world of photography and the ‘Cabinet Of Curiosity” in which installation conjures an unexpected, illusive image of a cabinet,” said Korakot. “Pattana’s documentary photography illustrates the tragedy of the night street, in which vehicles crash, grate, and crumple on one another, expressing extreme violence in an uncanny, still ambience.”
Krisada and Pattana, along with three other Thai artists, were featured in an exhibition “Young Thai Contemporary Emerging” last year at Gallery D-9 on Nakornchaisri Road. This year’s addition of Malaysian and Singaporean artists provides, though not comprehensive, a more extensive look into Southeast Asian’s contemporary art scene.
Haffendi Anuar’s Window 16.
Though most of the works seem a jumble of ideas randomly placed together, there’s an interesting link between paintings by Malaysian Haffendi Anuar and Kedsuda Loogthong.
While Anuar translates his impression of the urban landscapes, gathered by walking around the city, into colourful abstraction, Kedsuda responds to changes in the globalised world by returning to her roots, not just for the subject, but also for the materials used in her paintings.
Korakot said Kedsuda’s paintings transform everyday objects into valuable objects through the process of memory.
“Her paintings are daubed with lumps of earth from her hometown,” said Korakot. “The painting is not a stage for crafting layers of colours, but a site for accumulating remains of the past. It represents a memory that revolves around objects so that the artist may transfigure into a medium conveying these intricate emotions.”
The most striking, also the biggest, piece is of course Promthum Woravut’s drawing of a huge multiple-choice answer sheet, behind which there’s a whole classroom where students are lined up on stands, as if for a yearbook. With the students looking emotionless, almost like robots, and the answer sheet upfront, it has the feel of prison bars rather than a tool for knowledge assessment. It’s a biting critique of our education system.
“Frequently, artists synthesise data and what they gather around themselves, turning them into content or stories that they tell in their own ways,” said Korakot.
“This also rings true for the eight artists in this group exhibition. Despite their different ways of looking at and corresponding to what they try to synthesise, the works reflect the artists’ individuality, surrounding conditions and ways of thinking, which constitute their unique personalities and outlooks on contemporary life.”
‘Synthesis’ is on display at The Art Center, Office of Academic Resources, Chulalongkorn University, until Aug 8.
Exhibition view.
