EXHIBITION

KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI

Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3

3 April–5 June 2016

Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3 is Bangkok’s premier of Korakrit Arunanondchai’s third video piece of this series: an epilogue to the previous two made by the artist between 2011-2015.  This piece centers around a conversation between the ‘The Denim Painter’, a representation of the artist, and ‘Chantri’, an omniscient spirit. Within his intimate letter to the latter, fragments of Arunanondchai’s thoughts on spirituality, technology, and geopolitics fuse to narrate his views towards contemporary society.  Here, reality, fiction and fantasy blend in with one another as Arunanondchai ruminates on Buddhist and Animistic beliefs, and furthermore the implications of being a Thai artist in today’s society.  The exhibition features site-specific installations of several evolving artworks that Arunanondchai has produced since the conception of this body of work.

SELECTED WORKS

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3, 2015

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3, 2015

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3 – Untitled (audiences), 2016

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3 – Untitled (audiences), 2016

VIDEO

ARTIST

Korakrit Arunanondchai (2024). Photo: Harit Srikhao

KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI

b.1986. Lives in Bangkok, Thailand and New York, USA

A visual artist, filmmaker and storyteller, Korakrit Arunanondchai employs his versatile practice to tell stories embedded in cultural transplantation and hybridity. His body of work merges fiction with poetry and offers synesthetic experiences engaged in a multitude of subjects primarily based on lives of family, friends, and colleagues as much as local myths. Surpassing a solitary artist, Arunanondchai is an avid collaborator who has worked on videos, performances and music together with an extensive list of people.

Arunanondchai’s first video in a series of work, 2012–2555 (2012), arose from the ideas of death, rebirth and the fictionalization of time and was shown at MoMA PS1 in New York (2014). Together with Arunanondchai’s twin brother Korapat Arunanondchai, the performance artist, boychild and artist Alex Gvojic, they produce a live performance to accompany the video installation as part of the Sunday Sessions at MoMA PS1. In 2015, He exhibited Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3 at Palais de Tokyo, Paris and in 2016 exhibited as Arunanondchai’s first solo show at BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY.

 
In early 2018, Arunanondchai co-founded Ghost Foundation, a non-profit organization aimed to support a video and performance art series in Thailand entitled Ghost. He curated its inaugural series, Ghost:2561, during October 11-28, 2018 in Bangkok.