The opening of 100 Tonson Gallery's "Chatchai Puipia: Sites Of Solitude. Still-Life, Self-Portraiture, And The Living Archive" last month seemed to have been an unmissable event for every prominent figure in the Bangkok art scene, except for Chatchai himself. It's not that there was something urgent he had to attend to; he had no intention of going, not when the show was being set up, nor when it was running.
In 2011, Chatchai, one of Thailand's most prominent contemporary artists, released a hefty mock-up funeral tribute book Chatchai Is Dead. If Not, He Should Be in which there were his collection of works and eulogies from his family and friends. Four years later, Chatchai remains relatively true to that statement, confining himself to just an intimate circle of family and friends and his studios in Bangkok and Nakhon Pathom's Nakhon Chai Si district.
In a telephone interview, when I asked him if I could go to interview him in person, although he didn't say no, that was definitely the answer.
"I'm not comfortable being in public," said Chatchai. "At an exhibition opening, for example, it is a basic art business ritual to sign autographs or take photos, which I'm not very good at it. For years I have been trying to find and live the way that I wanted, but it's not that easy. I've always had conflict with the meaning of success. Ever since I was young, I never liked being the centre of attention."
At 100 Tonson Gallery, on the back of what appears to be a canvas hung a pair of scissors, a pair of pliers, an adjustable wrench, a chisel and a hacksaw among other technical tools. Entitled Tools No.1, it is just a painting, a super-realist one, which is surprising considering it is by Chatchai, whom we have come to know through a series of satirical, eye-popping self-portraits. On the opposite wall, however, is that familiar face again, but this time the facial expressions in these self-portraits are much calmer.
While the former painting was way back from his student years at Silpakorn University, the latter was done just last year.
Chatchai was chosen as an inaugural artist for 100 Tonson Gallery and Thai Art Archive's imminent launch of www.100artistarchives.com, a comprehensive online database of Thai contemporary artists, with annotated biographies, bibliographies, and a new art historical reconsideration of their lives and works.
Chatchai Puipia working in his studio.
"Despite the fact he's known globally," said Gregory Galligan, director and co-founder of Thai Art Archives, "there's very little information about him and people don't fully understand what his work is about and this is what the archive is trying to do for him and for as many Thai artists as we can for the next few years. Chatchai has a place in a very important period in Thai art history; in the 1980s, when an awful lot here was changing, from a traditional scene to being more progressive, more global, towards a contemporary art world."
The exhibition is neither comprehensive nor chronological. Next to Tools No.1, there's In Meditation, an abstract assemblage piece from 1991 on which layers of paint and discovered objects were piled up in a rich ensemble.
"I was around 20 years old [when I painted Tools No.1]," recounted Chatchai. "I just entered art school and everything was new. There wasn't much idea or thought in them. It had a lot to do with the environment I found myself in as a young man, that sense of competitiveness in class, a period of time for experimenting and the question of skills at Silpakorn University was a very important matter then."
Further in, Still-Life Vase With 12 Sunflowers, 118 Years Later and Still Life With Onions, 110 Years Later (Homage To Cézanne) were his tributes to the old masters whom Galligan said Chatchai thinks of as his ancestors.
This show, the first of a two-part exhibition (the second part will begin in September), provides glimpses into the artist's significant moments in his career. The central section where a collection of the artist's memorabilia — books, photos, sketches, paint pallet — is displayed in a glass case serves as a prelude to Chatchai's detailed biography, which will later be published on the website.
The most striking part of the show is his most recent series of self-portraits which have never been shown before. Unlike his earlier self-portraits, with wild and satirical facial expressions, his face in these pieces, surrounded by an abundance of butterflies, is incredibly calm, to the point of being melancholic. Often, Chatchai recalls, he would wake up to find a great amount of dead butterflies in his Nakhon Chai Si studio because of the toxins from his paint.
It is for this reason, Galligan explained, that butterflies came to symbolise the artist's attempt to create something beautiful out of tragedy.
"I feel there's a connection between these butterflies and my work," said Chatchai. "There's a sense of poetry in them. These works are not as adventurous as what I used to do, but I feel it goes well with how I've lived my life lately."
"Chatchai Puipia: Sites Of Solitude. Still-Life, Self-Portraiture, And The Living Archive" is on display until Jan 3 at 100 Tonson Gallery.
Tools No.1.
