ALL IS PRETTIER
Artist(s)
Udomsak Krisanamis
Curator
Chomwan Weeraworawit
copied
Informed by the history of painting and modern art, ALL IS PRETTIER. immerses us in a world created by Udomsak Krisanamis that is both about painting and person: an artist and an art form inextricably entwined in a life lived within and beyond the art world.
Curated by Chomwan Weeraworawit
Whilst preparing for the exhibition, Udomsak Krisanamis was reminded of a quote by Andy Warhol, ‘All is pretty’, and was drawn to its simple truth. ‘All is pretty’ means that everything, as ordinary or unloved as it may be, has inherent beauty. For over three decades, Krisanamis has taken the most ordinary, unloved objects and surfaces and made them “prettier”. That all things have the capacity to be pretty suggests there is nothing that cannot become an artist’s canvas: there is nothing so ordinary that it cannot be art.
Over six months, and in three parts, Krisanamis will transform 100 Tonson Foundation into a factory inspired by Warhol’s own such space: a place for imagination, experimentation, and boundless creation for both the artist and his community. Krisanamis’ rendition of the Factory will pay homage to Warhol’s: a living space that morphs into various incarnations throughout its three-phase evolutionary existence. The room will become the artist’s studio, where the public is invited to observe, listen, or read, and ultimately serve as a factory for making memories. After all, everything is prettier when it has the care and attention of a community.
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PART I: SPEED
“The ultimate concept car will move so fast, even at rest, as to be invisible.” ― J.G. Ballard
Speed, acceleration, gaining velocity to the point that form is lost, becoming little more than strokes of light through space. Coming to rest and then accelerating once more. As the streaks are frozen on canvas, time is captured. The paintings of SPEED were created during a period of stillness for Krisanamis: during the stagnant days of COVID where movement was limited and travel was confined. That inertia birthed a dynamism and an intuitive desire for movement on his canvases. A matcha brush dipped in Chinese ink applied effortlessly, like a subtle dance across canvases of coloured twill and upcycled wooden panels. Found objects becoming assemblages. A car hood turned into a canvas: the only one retaining the zeroes of another era, two-dimensional and flattened but a world in itself –a feeling. Not a frenetic energy but one that drives into the future, into a direction that brings with it the weight of past entanglements while becoming a new form. References to modern masters, from Clyfford Still and Robert Rauschenburg to Louise Nevelson, are a starting point for Krisanamis’ deconstruction and interrogation of form. Finding a new language and confidence in broad, minimal brush strokes, Krisanamis makes his departure from these modern masters. Moving into space with the speed of a Shinkansen train, the Japanese countryside is a blur, lights from a tunnel becoming lines of primary colours, this is a moving painting. Light rays bouncing off silver foil, reflecting and changing the texture of colour. Speed, a notion so fleeting that it can only be captured as a concept, here, in the paintings.
PART II: ARRIVAL
Following on from Part I SPEED, which explored acceleration that becomes form in the latest body of work by Udomsak Krisanamis, PART II ARRIVAL is an invitation from the Artist to other artists. After acceleration and moving forward for an indeterminate time, one dreams of arrival. Arriving home, one doesn’t imagine arriving to a void, but rather to a warm place, that is filled with family and friends.
ARRIVAL is an invitation from Krisanamis to other artists to show in this silver cube, a factory for making, what could be his studio or living room. With over 30 artists in the presentation - different voices, forms, and aesthetics, become a world. A world that is at once joyful as it is bleak, as tragic as it is hopeful, blurring the lines that separate personal histories, the human condition, alternative narratives, process, critique, satire, and politics, in a metallic world. For the artist, in his silver cube, there is no limit to friends and community, to memory, there is only coming together and arriving. Proceeds from the sale of works available for purchase will go directly to each artist, donation to the ongoing program of the Foundation is as they wish to donate.
ARRIVAL is in loving memory of our dear friend and supporter Petch Osathanugrah.
PART III: STRIKE
For the third and final part of Udomsak Krisanamis’ three-part project at 100 Tonson Foundation, STRIKE brings seemingly disparate, unconnected strands and narratives together in one space. STRIKE is like a compilation record of greatest hits, united not by theme but by the fact that there are the greatest hits. It is the final act, the last supper, the crescendo just before the end of a sonata when tension escalates to a shrilling height, and then all is silent. What started off as speed and acceleration to arrive, finding a warm and unexpected community speaking about everything and nothing all at once is to reach this moment.
STRIKE compiles Krisanamis’ paintings over the last decades, from the small feelings to the magnum opus, from the drawings to the noodle collages, from the crates to the canvases. Appropriation, simulacra, abstraction, reduction, assemblage, and invitation, a convergence of movements, forms, and references coming together in a glorious dance. What makes the greatest hits and lands them in the Hall of Fame? It is perhaps not just the soul of the music but it is the listener who decides. In that compilation, we can sing along to every song just as in STRIKE we can see and feel the artist’s greatest hits, thus far. Lightning doesn’t only strike once, but many times, in this room, a conversation is ignited about the past, the present, and the future but only he hears the music as he continues to paint.
About the artist
Udomsak Krisanamis
Born 1966, Bangkok Thailand
Lives and works in Chiangmai
Udomsak Krisanamis has been a prominent figure in the Thai and international contemporary art scene for over three decades. After completing a Bachelor of Education Program in Art Education at Chulalongkorn University, Krisanamis enrolled at Pratt University in Brooklyn, New York before completing his MFA in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Krisanamis returned to New York to found a practice that championed objet trouvés, creating a distinct collage technique using materials as diverse as newsprint and noodles, and painting on surfaces that were not the typical artist’s canvas. Krisanamis’ earlier works comprise of densely-layered grids and experimentation with texture, depicting what could be abstract cityscapes, starscapes, and even digital-scapes; whereas, his more recent works express bold and conceptual statements, expanding to include bright monochrome colours with striking patterns, while continuing to incorporate unconventional “found objects” such as straw and yoga mats, egg cartons and paper packaging, and ping pong tables into immersive installations. This incorporation of daily life, one could even say celebration of everyday objects and rituals, into his multi-disciplinary practice defines both an aesthetic and a narrative that is intrinsically personal and uniquely his own.
Selected solo exhibitions include a retrospective Re-Presentation: Redux (Bangkok University Gallery, 2019); Retrospective curated by Rirkrit Tiravanija (CMU Art Center, Chiangmai, 2016); Planet Caravan (Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong, 2014); Udomsak Krisanamis (Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, NY, 2012); a mindful mission (Galeria Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin, and Kunstverein Freiberg, 2011); and Udomsak Krisanamis (Kunsthalle Basel, 2003). His works have been included in group exhibitions including SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2017); Art and Music-Search for New Synesthesia (Museum Of Tokyo, 2012); Dereconstruction (Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY 2006); Bidibidobidiboo, curated by Francesco Bonami (Colllezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2005); Greater New York (P.S.1, Long Island City, NY 2000); Examining Pictures (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1999); 11th Sydney Biennale (1998); and Project 63 (Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1998). His works are found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Albright Knox Art Gallery, New York; Cartier Foundation, Paris; and Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, among others.
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CURATOR:
Dr. Chomwan Weeraworawit has worked with artists and filmmakers in various capacities over the last 15 years. With a legal background and a Ph.D. from King’s College London with a focus on intellectual property, she uses the critical basis of her legal training to work in collaborative ways with artists and makers of different disciplines. In 2010 she founded Mysterious Ordinary, a creative studio and consultancy as a vehicle to curate, create and produce projects with artists, filmmakers, architects, and designers. Film on the Rocks Yao Noi, a multi-disciplinary film festival that she co-founded in 2012 was curated by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton, bringing together various disciplines and communities through experiences. Since then, she has collaborated with artists from Rirkrit Tiravanija on fundraising for The Land Foundation to Korakrit Arunanondchai on the inaugural edition of GHOST and most recently with Pinaree Sanpitak on a commission by Valentino at ART SG 2023. A through-line in her approach is to bring diverse communities together to experience art and culture in unexpected ways, in this way, the curator and producer becoming a host. Informed by her Ph.D. research she co-founded the brand Philip Huang with her husband and collaborates with the artisans in the Northeast Thailand to explore how artisanal knowledge can be evolved for the future through fashion, design, and art. Weeraworawit was on the curatorial team of the third edition of the Bangkok Art Biennale in 2022.
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