“The idea of what painting is or could be became somehow akin to the image of the earth, as seen from above, from the viewpoint of a drone or a spirit. As the denim burns away so begins an upload of ourselves to a greater network where we are no longer human.” — Korakrit Arunanondchai
Born in 1986 in Bangkok, Korakrit Arunanondchai studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, subsequently receiving his MFA from Columbia University having trained alongside artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. Spanning several artistic disciplines, Arunanondchai is a visual artist, a filmmaker and, most importantly, a storyteller. His works delve into themes of historical memory and personal narrative, ritual and animism, intermingling also with Thai hip-hop, technology and geopolitics in a unique blend of East and West, old and new.
As viewers are plunged into the sensorial explosion of Arunanondchai’s artistic vision, they are confronted by an art form of totality. Drifting between mediums, the sole thread running consistent throughout his works is the exploration of identity, namely that of a contemporary artist within our highly globalised world. Prophesying the Dadaist essence of artistic production in the contemporary age, in 1918 Richard Huelsenbeck wrote in his manifesto: 'Life appears as a simultaneous confusion of noises, colours and spiritual rhythms, and is thus incorporated – with all the sensational screams and feverish excitements of its audacious everyday psyche and the entirety of its brutal reality – unwaveringly into Dadaist art.' i
Installation view of Painting with history in a room filled with men with funny names 2 (with Korapat Arunanondchai) (Phrase I), Bill Brady KC Gallery, Kansas City, 2014
Courtesy Bill Brady KC Gallery, Kansas City
The present lot, My Trip to White Temple 3, was shown in Painting with history in a room filled with men with funny names 2. Having adopted an avatar of the denim painter, Arunanondchai is keenly aware of the uncertainty of self and experience, charting his personal growth with critical distance through his alter ego. Using denim as an emblem of Western capitalist waste and gold as flotsam of religious artefact, Arunanondchai cultivates a hypocentre of cross-cultural miscellany, fragmenting coherency as he recasts the flat surface of painting as a three-dimensional immersive experience. Architectural patterns of the White Temple combine with singed denim, likened to the burning of joss paper in Chinese culture, lifting the everyday into the realm of the unknown in a curious juxtaposition of the elemental with the mundane. Art and painting become a ritualistic endeavour and an opportunity for transformation.
“ When I think of performance, I think of ritual, of a ceremonial circle, but not connected to any particular religion or belief system. Unflattening flattened identities into stories – I think that’s my point on identity.” — Korakrit Arunanondchai
Wat Rong Khun (known as the White Temple), Chiang Rai, Thailand
Korakrit Arunanondchai has shown in numerous notable institutions worldwide, including CLEARING, New York; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Museum of Modern Art PS1, New York; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, and many more. He was included in the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennale. His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; K11, Hong Kong; among others. Arunanondchai currently lives and works in New York and Bangkok.
i Richard Huelsenbeck, DADA Manifesto, Berlin, April 1918, online
Provenance
Bill Brady Gallery, Kansas City Private Collection Phillips, New York, 17 November 2016, lot 106 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited
Kansas City, Bill Brady Gallery, Painting with history in a room filled with men with funny names 2, 13 September - 19 October 2013
signed and dated 'Krit 2013' on the reverse denim on digitally printed canvas with foil stamping 222.3 x 142.2 cm. (87 1/2 x 55 7/8 in.) Executed in 2013.