ART-PRESENTATION: Korakrit Arunanondchai
Korakrit Arunanondchai draws on an eclectic array of references in his practice: from popular culture, technology and geopolitics, to Buddhist and animist precepts and their contemporary manifestations in Thailand. Whether taking form as denim body painting, performance, or immersive installation, Arunanondchai’s pastiche of styles and mediums celebrates the blurring of fantasy and reality, science and incorporeality, art and life.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma Archive
Korakrit Arunanondchai in his solo exhibition at Kiasma in Helsinki presents his intriguing visual worlds, combining collective memory of the digital era, his family’s and his own personal experiences. The artist himself and his close relatives are often involved in works that absorb popular culture, technology, mythology, animism and geopolitics. The exhibition features the installation “with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4” (2017) and the video installation, “Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3” (2015). The multimedia installation “with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4” (2017) is divided into three rooms. His new work features many of the elements of his artistic universe, such as: the oversized rat that has survived the apocalypse, the serpent-spirit Naga that is symbolizing the spirit that does not surrender to the power of authority, and the drone-spirit Chantri, which speaks in the voice of the artist’s mother and enables a hypnotic dialogue about the possibility of rebirth, of reconnection with our lost self. The first room of the installation presents the artists’ new HD video in a darkened space with pillows and a costume. The second is a room overflowing with growth. Electrical wires and roots of dead trees morph into one another, mixed with bamboo, banana leaves, coconuts, carpet, resin and prayer objects for the nāga deity. Clinical and organic clash with intravenous bags, old car parts and seafood waste, among many other objects, are held together by surround sound. The third room is quiet, clean and minimal, bringing an elasticated sense of time together as the objects are made by Tipyavarna Nitibhon. The video also includes Arunanondchai’s grandmother stroking some of the lit blown glass pods that are in room two. The film “Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3” (2015) is the epilogue of a trilogy of videos that began in 2012. Situated somewhere between a hip-hop music video and an evangelist ad, the film contemplates the possibility of divinity in the age of advanced technology and globalisation. Here the character of the denim painter talks to Chantri, both a spirit and a drone. In a time when technological singularity does not seem like science-fiction anymore and spirits could equal to information, the video attempts to find a space for the past in the near future.
Info: Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki, Duration: 29/9/17-18/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue & Sun 10:00-17:00, Wed-Fri 10:00-20:30, Sat 10:00-18:00, www.kiasma.fi
