ALL IS PRETTIER. PART I: SPEED
Artist(s)
Udomsak Krisanamis
Curator
Chomwan Weeraworawit
copied
“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 Rauschenberg 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.
UDOMSAK KRISANAMIS
ALL IS PRETTIER.
22.06.2023 - 19.11.2023
Curated by Chomwan Weeraworawit
PART I: SPEED
22.06.2023 - 13.08.2023
PART II: ARRIVAL
24.08.2023 - 01.10.2023
PART III: STRIKE
05.10.2023 - 19.11.2023
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.
The exhibition will be on view at 100 Tonson Foundation from 22 June 2023 – 19 November 2023 and will be divided into three parts with each part having its own public programming and activities which will be announced at a later date.
PART 1 of the exhibition, titled SPEED will be on view until 19 August 2023.
About the artist
Born: 1966 - Bangkok, Thailand.
Lives in Chiang Mai
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 with 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. His more recent works express bold and conceptual statements, expanding to include bright monochrome colours with striking patterns while continuing to integrate unconventional “found objects” such as straw and yoga mats, egg cartons and paper packaging, even 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 Nourbakhsh, Berlin, and Kunstverein Freiberg, 2011); and Udomsak Krisanamis (Kunsthalle Basel, 2003). His works have been included in group exhibitions, such as the Bangkok Art Biennale 2022; 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 (Collezione 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.