English

Thai

home

spotlight

highlights

listings

calendar

art map

archive

about bam

home

welcome

to the january issue...

The biggest event regionally this month is the second annual Art Stage Singapore, which takes place from Jan 11-15. Despite an absence of Thai galleries, the burgeoning international fair features significant participation from Navin Rawanchaikul, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Thai artists represented by Tang Contemporary Art.

Our cover image and Exhibition Spotlight this month features the atmospheric photographs of Somsak Pattanapitoon, whose exhibition Muang Krung Muang Thep is on view at Silpakorn Universitys Art Centre . Using infrared film, Somsak searches under the exterior shell of the Thai capitals dominant concrete infrastructure to seek a spiritual asylum (see Exhibition Spotlight).

In other news, after postponement due to the floods V64 Art Studio has rescheduled its Grand Opening to Jan 20. If the same schedule is maintained, the Viphawadi 64 site will stage music, performance, an installation exhibition, as well as an art auction.

Having left its former location at the BACC, BKK Arthouse has been resurrected in a new home at the private art school of Studio Miu Art at Home Place on Soi Thonglor. For their first exhibition Worapong Manupipatpong displays geometric wood assemblages works (For more information: 080-990-6910).

Organised in conjunction with H Gallery, the Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok is hosting the exhibition Bangkok Mass Transit System , by Sarawut Ngernpum. On view from Jan 9 Feb 6, the large powerful semi abstractions explore the effects of urbanisation (For more information: 02-126-8866).

We add one new space this month with the opening of We*Do Gallery at Thonglor 8. To mark the recent opening of the new European owned design, fashion, and art space We*Do at Thonglor 8, is the inaugural exhibition The Oracle, featuring photographs by 11 international artists (see Exhibition Highlights).

Steven Pettifor

Available free citywide, pick up your copy of BAM today and participate in the promotion of art in Thailand. For sponsorship enquiries, email: erika_talisman-media.com

spotlight

jan 12
dec 11
nov 11
oct 11
sept 11
aug 11
jul 11
jun11
may 11
apr 11
mar 11

jan 12

Muang Krung Muang Thep

exhibition spotlight:

In his latest exhibition of photography, Muang Krung Muang Thep, Somsak Pattanapitoon scratches below the surface of his native domain to search for sanctity, while highlighting the complexities of a conurbation in the throngs of relentless development. An optometrist by trade, Somsak has an acute awareness of our field of vision, fueling his passion for photography. Refining hisself-taught craft over the past decade, he has earned himself a seat on the committee of the Royal Photographic Society of Thailand. Inspiration for Muang Krung Muang Thep came during the New Year holiday, when Bangkoks streets become devoid of the daily traffic tailbacks and sidewalk melee. Indicators of the brash pace of development, the dominant concrete and steel frames of metropolitan infrastructure, appear eerily tranquil. The desolate thoroughfares offer a rare respite that Somsak supposes can only be sustained if the populace were to evacuate, leaving the city to wandering resident spirits, or celestial angels. Captured on infrared film, the fleeting natural light of transient moments contribute an ethereal quality to the black and white prints. Continuing with themes previously established in the 2005-7 Ayutthaya focused series The Base of Siam, temple architecture permeates many of the Bangkok compositions. There are fractions in these depictions of devotional structures, the consecrated desecrated in misguided attempts to improve and modernise. Through a visual intersection of the manmade and the natural, Somsak presents a potent alchemy that celebrates life. There is an element of the prophetic to Muang Krung Muang Thep, that the citys future trajectory is reflective upon the journey of mankind. In a suggestive but nonconfrontational approach that is ostensibly Buddhist, Somsak subtly nudges viewers to step back, contemplate and reevaluate our actions in the path towards progress.

Jan 16 - Feb 10 (Opens Jan 16 at 6:30pm)

Art Centre, Silpakorn University 31 Na Phra Lan Rd (opp the Grand Palace) | 02-221-3841 | Mon-Fri 9am-7pm, Sat 9am -4pm l www.art-centre.su.ac.th

dec 11

Charles LaBelle

exhibition spotlight:

Begun fourteen years ago, Buildings Entered is an ongoing, lifetime project in which American artist Charles LaBelle documents every building he physically enters. Currently, there are over thirteen thousand buildings in the archive, with additional buildings being added almost daily. Conceptual in nature, the project is both a diary and a historical document in which the artists own life and the space of the world intersect. Recorded photographically, with the photos themselves never exhibited, LaBelle selects certain buildings to render in watercolor pencil atop gesso painted pages torn from a relevant theoretical tome. These public drawings are incidental to the individual physical and philosophical encounter between the artist and the penetrated space. Aside from the profiles of specific geographies, architectural nuances, and concurrent cultural characteristics, LaBelles art reflects his personal behaviour patterns, as well as his approach to process, time-based, and performance art. For the Hong Kong-based artists first solo project in Thailand, Number 1 Gallery will present an ambitious architecturally inspired drawing installation. On view are two bodies of drawings; the 200-composite sketches in the body focused Corpus, alongside the newly created site-responsive series of 100 drawings, A Kind of Counter Sublime (Bangkok Selects 2008 / 2010 / 2011). Presented as single moments in a larger continuous narrative that is never actually told, the exhibition is both a celebration and critique of what Walter Benjamin called the phantasmagoria of the modern metropolis. Drawing a parallel with the structural aesthetics of the city outside, the installation is comprised of a parasitic wooden structure that creates a new environment within the gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition LaBelle will hold a talk on his art and a book launch for the recently published Corpus. Hosted by the Reading Room, the event takes place on Wednesday December 21 at 7pm.

Dec 17 –- Jan 21 (Opens Dec 17 at 5pm)

Number 1 Gallery, Silom Galleria B1, 919/1 Silom Rd Soi 19 | 02-630-3381 | Mon-Sat 10am-7pm, Sun 11am-6pm | www.number1gallery.com | BTS Surasak

nov 11

Primitive

exhibition spotlight:

Chiang Mai-based director Apichatpong Weerasethakul propelled Asian cinema to new heights when he walked away with the 2010 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The winning film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2009), is sensual in its allusions to dreams and memory, with underlying themes of ancestry, mortality and reincarnation. Hailed an auteur, Apichatpong has a technical mastery in all aspects of his filmmaking. Delivered through languid atmospheric cinematography, non-linear structures, and enhanced through a poetic sense of space and geography, his emphasis is on rural heritage against modern urbanity, sexuality and homoeroticism, animism and local folklore. He is inspired by the movies he watched as a child growing up in the impoverished northeastern region of Isaan, along with local soap operas, the live theatre tradition of likay, experimental cinema, and autobiographical referencing. One of Thailands only trained filmmakers to experiment in media art, Apichatpong has previously explored the visual potentialities of shooting on a mobile phone for Nokia Shorts (2003), and the Tsunami-resonant Ghost of Asia (2005), in which he invited three children to direct a solitary ghost character. Conscientiously attempting a more utopian approach to filmmaking, he also recruits amateur actors in his improvisational films. On view at the Jim Thompson Art Centre, his latest work, multiple video installation Primitive, was filmed around the northeastern village of Nabua. During the 1960s the village was home to several communist farmer insurgents who battled the Thai military before fleeing into the jungle. By implanting fictional scenarios such as constructing a spaceship for a pseudo sci-fi film, Apichatpong metaphorically explores the memories and socio-political legacy of this turbulent period of history by observing the behaviour and activities of todays younger generation of listless villagers.

1 Dec - 29 Feb, 2012

Jim Thompson Art Centre, 6 Kasemsan 2, Rama I Rd | 02-216-7368 | 9am-5pm | www.jimthompsonhouse.com | BTS National Stadium

oct 11

Ant(arctic)a

exhibition spotlight:

Derived from the Greek word polemikos, meaning hostile, the word polemic is used to describe disputes, but in relation to the photographs of Australian Stephen Eastaugh and Argentinian Carolina Furque, it is used literally to describe the opposing polar positioning of the Arctic and Antarctic. Few can claim to have as much experience of these dramatic icy terrains as this intrepid husband and wife pairing. Independently they have ventured to the top and bottom of the world to capture the stunning desolate expanses of some of the planet’s last surviving wildernesses. A world away from the equatorial tropics where Thailand comfortably sits, the harsh white continents present challenging habitations that few dare to tread. An intrepid traveler who has spent prolonged periods at many of the world’s far-flung outposts, Eastaugh’s embedded journeys provide the inspiration for a diaristic art that scratches beneath the typical exotic touristic veneer. As a part of the Australian Antarctic Division’s arts fellowship program, Eastaugh joined numerous field trips across Mac Robertson Land in East Antarctica, where he worked in the world’s southern most studio. Capturing the polar light phenomenon of the Aurora Australis, his ethereal colour shots of the Antarctic are mystical in their suspended dreamlike atmosphere. They evoke the humbling isolation of the frozen terrains that reduces humanity to insignificance. In the northern Arctic around Greenland, Furque uses her Russian Holga camera to capture monochromatic stills of the dark and mysterious, remote and melancholic. A viewfinder into a distant realm, the sheen of her old camera and the developing techniques she employs create a blurring of reality and fantasy that contributes a mood of intimate memory. Despite the lack of direct human penetration into these icecaps, the destructive behaviour of the global populace is causing ecological concerns for both polar ecosystems. Let’'s hope we can rectify our wasteful consumptive practices before these majestic landscapes degrade into environmental wastelands.

Oct 4 –- Nov 5

La Lanta Fine Art, 245/14 Sukhumvit Soi 31 02-260-5381, 02-204-0583 | Tue-Sat 10am-7pm; Sun by appointment | www.lalanta.com | BTS Phrom Phong

sept 11

Bruised

exhibition spotlight:

Love
Sex
War

Bruises and scars are physical traces of individual fallibility, but they also provoke assumptions about the history and determiners behind such inflictions. In Bruised, the latest series of acrylic paintings by Thaweesak Srithongdee on view at Thavibu Gallery, Lolay as he is better known, expands his fascination with the human condition to question our existence and ultimate survival. The 41-year-old Lolay has participated innumerous exhibitions in Thailand and abroad, including a residency at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan in 2005, the Fukuoka Triennale, and the 2010 Busan Biennale. Coming from the southern beach resort of Hua Hin, he has previously engineered a spurious race of Adonic, pectoral defined, super-beings that played with perceptions of body image. The naked doll-like caricatures seem both proud in their physicality, yet modest, even conservative, in their androgny. Typically manifested through paint, print, and animation, in recent years he has extended his slick idealised figures into impressive monumental resin sculptures. Visualising the contusion theme through water saturated bled colours atop bare white backdrops, Lolay enmeshes organic, sinuous imagery that slices beneath the pop-erotic flesh to reveal the organs and innards that control and sustain our existence. Whereas before he has portrayed specific historic icons such as Hitler, Ghandi, Einstein, and Darwin, for Bruised the individual has become irrelevant as the artist questions humanity's insignificance within the greater cosmos. A barometer of commercial culture, on the surface Lolay's art champions a plasticized and emotionally detached veneer. Influenced by the mass media trends in animation and comic book art that so captivate Asia's urban youth, his art holds a certain aesthetic kinship to the Superflat art of Takashi Murakami, Aida Makoto's anime paintings, or the twisted fantasies of Odani Motohiko.

Sep 17 - Oct 15

Thavibu Gallery Suite 308, Silom Galleria F3, 919/1 Silom Rd, Soi 19 | 02-266-5454 | Mon-Sat 11am-7pm | www.thavibu.com l BTS Surasak

aug 11

Burqa–2010

exhibition spotlight:

Burqa
Burqa
Burqa

In the Western world's post 9-11 paranoia, religious tolerance has been undermined with perceptions of Muslim appearance and behaviour becoming tainted and laden with prejudice. Harassment at airports has become commonplace and there is an increased wavering of civil and personal liberties. In 2010 the French government passed a law banning the public wearing of the burqa the full-faced covering of Muslim women. Even in Bangkok this year, several female high school students were denied permission to wear Muslim headscarves to a school that is located within a Buddhist compound. Hailing from Pattani province in Thailand's restive south, 28-year-old Ampannee Satoh was a student of photography in France at the time of the burqa ban. As a young Muslim woman she felt compelled to visualise her objection to such a law by donning the outer garment for the series of protesting photos titled Burqa. Having recently returned to Thailand to teach photography at Rangsit University, the photos are on view this month and next at Kathmandu Photo Gallery. The nine colour images are simply constructed compositions of a burqa-clad female against several backdrops. There is an affirmation of presence as the subject stands alone in front of the iconic Parisian landmarks of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, as well as ancient Roman structures, a tower block backed urban cityscape, and against azure coastal horizons. In a range of hues that include the symbolic red, white and blue of the French tricolour, the flowing shiny burqas shimmer in the daylight further heightening the focus. Since childhood, Ampannee cites the revealing street photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson as influential to her passion for the lens. Indeed in 1948 the late French photographer himself captured an atmospheric scene of women in burqas praying at sunrise atop hills in Kashmir, India. In today's post 9-11 psychosis, images of veiled Muslim women or men dressed in traditional garb are loaded with thoughts of suspicion and fear. Ampannees series attempts to disarm such growing stereotypes and reiterate the individuals right to freedom and equality.

Aug 6 - Sep 25

Kathmandu Photo Gallery 87 Soi Pan, Silom Rd | 02-234-6700 | Tue-Sun 11am-7pm | www.kathmandu-bkk.com l BTS Chong Nonsi

jul 11

Life-Living

exhibition spotlight:

Life-Living
Life-Living2
Life-Living3
Life-Living4

The daughter of Impressionist painter Sa-Ngad Pui-ock and a former student of leading female artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, 35-year-old Sudsiri Pui-ock is one of the countrys best emergent artists. Whether surreptitiously installing piles of rocks across her fellow students study areas in Amsterdam, or boldly stepping in front of an oncoming juggernaut to make a street rubbing in Japan, Sudsiris art previously revealed her experiential thoughts on themes such as belonging, territory, and the home. Based in the northern art hub of Chiang Mai, Sudsiri uses painting, photography, time-based installation and video performance in her examination of aspects of identity, immersion and acceptance within alien cultures. Having undertaken several overseas residencies, much of Sudsiris previous work was born from feelings of isolation. This is evident in the 2005 video performance The Dinner, in which she served a banquet to a table setting of invisible guests as she actually sat dining alone. One of the artists preferred techniques is traditional paper rubbing with charcoal, which she first used in the 2006 video performance The Street of Two Birds, making rubbings of a manhole cover along a busy road in Japan by dramatically stepping out in front of approaching trucks at personal risk. As well as paper rubbings Sudsiri has also tried her hand at organic carving, cleaving growing vegetations such as giant pumpkins with elaborate imagery that evokes decorative table dressings in Thai restaurants. While many artists relinquish the role of creative crafting in favour of cerebral engagement, Sudsiri instead believes a hands-on approach encourages greater fluidity through the potential for malleable accidentals. In her latest solo exhibition Life-Living at Ardel Gallery of Modern Art, Sudsiri displays previously unseen rubbings of a car and the expansive tatami mat The Rice Sea, atop of which she installs newly created bronze sculptures of strange anthro-marine creatures. In sum, the non-confrontational exhibition shows a less angry artist who has resettled back into the Thai way of life, conveying an atmosphere of reflection and spirituality.

Jul 26 - Aug 28

Ardel Gallery of Modern Art, 99/45 Belle Ville, Boromratchonnanee Rd (Km 10.5) | 02-422-2092| Tue-Sat 10:30am-7pm, Sun 10:30am-5:30pm | www.ardelgallery.com

jun11

Disunion

exhibition spotlight:

Disunion
Disunion2
Disunion1

Disunion is the debut solo photographic exhibition by Benya Hegenbarth. Graduating with a BA in History from Connecticut College, in the United States, the 32 year-old Bangkok-based German-Thai photographer presents a series of dislocated architectural landscapes from northern Europe. Having initially studied the craft as a photographers assistant in Paris and New York, Hegenbarth has emerged as a burgeoning freelance photographer and talent in his own right. After relocating from New York to Thailand, the young lens man found his geo-cultural transition full of uncertainty and upheaval. Such reflections permeate the isolated autobiographical snaps he compiled while travelling through northern Europe, which this month are on display at H Gallery. Hegenbarths banal vernacular habitations exude familiarity, yet there is also a cool detachment of someone peripheral. Abandoned and devoid of human infraction, there is a brooding stillness that pitches the manmade against nature. The soft light and muted colours suggest a north European aesthetic, similarly projected through the anonymous cityscapes of German photographer Thomas Struth. Hegenbarth also cites the work of several American photographers Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Steven Shore, and more recently Alec Soth as being highly influential to his current approach to imagery. Laden with disconcerting nostalgia, the browning seasonal foliage and impending grey skies of the shots on display in Disunion imply transience. Marking a passage of time, they indicate diminished historical relevance, an era surpassed, a testament to the decline of old world European empires. The washed-out edifices to legacy, are polemic to the confident ascendency of new regional powerhouses, particularly that of Asia, where Hegenbarth migrated to establish a renewed sense of home.

Jun 2 - 30

H Gallery: 201 Soi 12 Sathorn Rd | 081-310-4428 | 10am-6pm, Tue by appointment | www.hgallerybkk.com I BTS Surasak

may 11

Phenomena & Prophecies

exhibition spotlight:

Pink, White, Blue.jpg
Bloodless War.jpg
Waiting for the King.jpg

Throughout his career photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom has provided a viewfinder into his own vulgar dystopia - the avaricious and deceptive face of contemporary society. After the success of his solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum last year, this leading Thai lens man gives local audiences the opportunity to see the same presentation of Phenomena & Prophecies, being held at the g23 gallery at Srinakarinwirot University. A BFA graduate from the university, the 49-year-old artist has made a strong presence on the international stage over the last 15 years, participating in the XXIV Sao Paula Biennale (1998), First Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, International Photography Biennale in Mexico, Cities On the Move (1999), and the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. He was also selected for Blink's 2002 book of the world's top 100 photographers. One of Thailand's most overtly political artists, Manit's 1997 series This Bloodless War drew upon infamous imagery from the Vietnam War as the basis for stinging, black - and white rebukes of the Thai government's futile and disastrous defence of the baht at a time of intense speculating from foreign market players. A recurrent theme originally conceived before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Manit's Pink Man incarnation is arguably his most imaginative and potent work to date. Executed through the colourful role-playing of collaborator performance artist Sompong Thawee as the blasé consumptive icon, Pink Mans empty shopping cart is a comment on the spiritual void of contemporary existence and the placatory desire to substitute such emptiness with needless consumer artifice (see Cover). The quagmire that is local politics has provided Manit with much ammunition before and since, the 2006 military coup. The army's putsch, the first in 15 years, has arguably had a destabilising affect upon Thai society, fuelling the still smouldering flames of sociopolitical discontent. Before the yellow and red shirted protests, Manit had intermittently documented the nature of Thailand's regular street based rallies for social justice, starting in 2003 with his series Protest. Subsequent documentations have included Liberators of the Nation (2006), Coup Détat Photo Op (2006), and Waiting for the King (2006).

Until Jul 18

g23, 2nd/3rd floor SWUNIPLEX, Srinakarinwirot University, end of Sukhumvit Soi 23 02-649-500 ext.5005 | Tue-Sun 11am-7pm | http://g23.swu.ac.th | MRT Petchburi/Sukhumvit, BTS Asok

apr 11

exhibition spotlight:

Chiang Mai Now!

Chiangmai-Now

An industrious artist from Chiang Rai, Angkrit Ajchariyasophon wears many creative hats. Whether manifested as performance, painting, or sculpture; identity driven, timebased or situational in nature, Angkrit is fascinated by public engagement and improvisational interaction as he strives to blur distinctions between art and daily life. Having run an artsy café along with Angkrit Gallery and studio, Angkrit assumes a curatorial role for Chiang Mai Now!, a new showcase exhibition at the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (BACC). Profiling 12-art collectives, community based cultural activities, artist residencies, and experiential platforms; the exhibition highlights the diversity and resourcefulness of the northern cultural scene. With its rootsy ambience, Chiang Mai has long been considered an alternative to Bangkoks bold brashness. During the 1990s, the Chiang Mai Social Installation was an experimental and challenging annual art event that helped launch the career of several artists, including Navin Rawanchaikul and Kosit Juntaratip. And there was a certain utopianism in artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kamin Lertchaiprasert 1998 purchase of rice fields in Chiang Mai province to initiate the ongoing The Land, a farm based intellectual and artistic community. With many of the participants conducting situational activities, it will be interesting to see how this translates to an exhibition within the confines of the BACC. The Lanna Bird & Nature Conservation Club promise to bring awareness of their northern Thai flock, while North Forest Studio and Pun Pun promote green architecture and energy efficiency. Lifestyle, social behaviour, and community engagement are the focus in the works of Punya Movie Club, the Chiang Mai Sunday Cycling Club, and Retracing Aesthetic & Friends. Design, use of materials, and accessibility are all approached in the work of Rabbithood Studio, and comedian-artist Udom Taepanichs DOMCUMENTARY studio. Malateh Media Studio meanwhile, archives local media as well as engaging ethnic minorities; while ComPeung is one of two residency programmes, the other being The Land, whose co-founder Kamin also promotes his latest venture in the spiritually inspired arts space, 31st Century Museum of Contemporary Spirit.

Apr 7 - Jun 19

BANGKOK ART & CULTURE CENTRE (BACC) 939 Rama I Rd, Pathumwan | 02-214-6630-1 | Tue-Sun 10am-9pm | www.bacc.or.th | BTS National Stadium

mar 11

g23

exhibition spotlight:

spotlight

Small commercial or collectively run art spaces come and go in Bangkok, but rarely do large non-commercial galleries boost the capital's exhibiting potential. The last such comprehensive arts platform to debut was the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (BACC) in late 2008, which despite ongoing budgetary and administrative issues is now becoming the active art centre it was always intended to be. Beyond local and national government backed venues, the citys other significant non-commercial art spaces are primarily situated within the grounds of Bangkok, Chulalongkorn, and Silpakorn Universities. Of these educational institution galleries, the lofty two-floor Bangkok University Gallery (BUG) near the port was the most aesthetically contemporary, but the newly opened g23 at Srinakarinwirot University (at the end of Sukhumvit 23) appears larger and is more centrally located. A part of significant new university building extensions, g23 is on the second and third levels of the learning and academic services centre SWUNIPLEX, which opens as a forecourt onto Asoke Road and is intended to draw the public into engaging with the universitys activities. The gallery's second floor is dedicated to more conventional art practice, while above the emphasis is more towards experimentation. This is reflected to a certain extent in the four exhibitions that mark g23s official opening. On the lower level is the retrospective exhibition of paintings, Abstract Applied Attitude, by the universitys president Wiroon Tungcharoen, alongside senior artist-lecturer Aree Soothipunts painterly presentation Motion/Emotion. The floor above is occupied by a group exhibition of artists supported by the Aree Soothipunt Foundation, while next door is the contemporary group show This is not a Fairy Tale, which is a re-composition of a group exhibition of Southeast Asian and then Thai art, first displayed in Korea (2006), and subsequently in Taiwan in 2008. The opening of g23 will certainly bolster the local art scene, with the universitys head promising to host significant international as well as domestically staged exhibitions. Convenient to both the Skytrain and the MRT, lets hope the public deems this new art centre a worthy deviation from their downtown commute.

Until Apr 10

g23, 2nd/3rd floor SWUNIPLEX, Srinakarinwirot University, end of Sukhumvit Soi 23 | 02-649-500 ext.5005 | Tue-Sun 11am-7pm | http://g23.swu.ac.th | MRT Petchburi/Sukhumvit, BTS Asok

highlights

jan 12
dec 11
nov 11
oct 11
sept 11
jul 11
jun 11
may11
apr 11
mar 11

listings
calendar

art map

archive
about bam
Twitter BirdThai