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NY | Chelsea

Anthropos

New York

September 4 – October 4, 2014

Chatchai Puipia, Life in the City of Angels: The Night Traveler, 2014, oil and pigments on canvas, 72.8 x 64.9 inches/185 x 165 cm
Chusak Srikwan, Man with Strength, 2014, cowhide, 66.9 x 66.9 inches/170 x 170 cm
Ho Tzu Nyen, Gould, video still, 2014, HD, 1 minute, 42 seconds
Jason Wee, Self-Portrait (Falling Dogman), 2014, watercolor on canvas, 90.5 x 59 inches/230 x 150 cm
Jeremy Sharma, Terra Sense Series, 2014, high-density polystyrene foam, 70.8 x 35.4 x 7.8 inches/180 x 90 x 20 cm
John Clang, Being Together (Parents), 2010, transparency and light box, edition 2/3, 39.3 x 62.9 inches/100 x 160 cm
Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Impermanent (Anijja), 2010-2012, wood, 67.7 x 14.1 x 11.8 inches/172 x 36 x 30 cm
Kamolpan Chotvichai, Person, 2014, c-print and hand-cut canvas, 43.7 x 45.2 inches/111 x 115 cm
Lavender Chang, Unconsciousness: Consciousness #1, 2011, transparency and lightbox, edition 1/2, 14 x 11.4 inches/35.6 x 29 cm
Nino Sarabutra, What Will You Leave Behind?, 2012, unglazed porcelain, dimensions vary
Piyatat Hemmatat, Titans, no. 18, 2014, Chromogenic print, Kodak Endura paper on Dibond, edition 1/1, 21.7 x 66.9 inches/55 x 170 cm
Tawan Wattuya, Soapland Girls #1, 2013, watercolor on paper, 39.3 x 78.7 inches/100 x 200 cm

About This Exhibition

Sundaram Tagore Gallery brings together emerging and established artists from Thailand and Singapore in Anthropos New York. Photography, painting, sculpture, video and mixed-media installations by twelve artists exploring the human condition will be on view. Curated by Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani, Anthropos New York offers insight into the social, political and religious dynamics artists are confronting in these two diverse cultures.

This large-scale exhibition, on view concurrently at the gallery’s Chelsea and Madison Avenue locations, offers a rare opportunity to see work by some of Southeast Asia’s most innovative artists.

From Thailand: Chatchai Puipia, Chusak Srikwan, Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Kamolpan Chotvichai, Nino Sarabutra, Piyatat Hemmatat and Tawan Wattuya.

From Singapore: Ho Tzu Nyen, Jason Wee, Jeremy Sharma, John Clang and Lavender Chang.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

 

Chatchai Puipia, one of Thailand's most prominent and influential artists, unveils a new series of large self-portraits. The reclusive painter’s last solo exhibition was in 2011 in conjunction with the release of his monograph Chatchai Is Dead. If Not He Should Be.

Chusak Srikwan’s work focuses on traditional Thai nang yai puppets, which have been essential instruments of performance and visual art for centuries. Srikwan carves light-and-shadow figures from cowhide, a practice he learned from his grandfather, a master of the craft-based art.

Ho Tzu Nyen, who was featured in the Guggenheim show No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, makes films, videos and stages live performances related to historical and philosophical texts and artifacts. Ho is one of Singapore’s most prominent artists.

Dividing his time between Singapore and New York, writer and artist Jason Wee traces the arc of changing histories and spaces, transforming these changes into visual and written materials. Wee is the founder of Grey Projects, Singapore, an alternative art space that focuses on emerging practices and censorship.

Jeremy Sharma works primarily as a painter, but his body of work includes video, photography, drawing and installation. His practice investigates the concept of art as a reflection of a conscious life in the age of mechanical, industrial and digital reproduction and interconnectivity.

John Clang’s work focuses on time, displacement and human existence. His photography examines and raises questions about the world he lives in, offering not pictorial documentation, but an intimate reflection of his mind.

Throughout his career, Kamin Lertchaiprasert has worked in a variety of media, including painting, prints, sculpture and installation. Lertchaiprasert’s primary concern is the expression of the Buddhist philosophy that life and art are one. Lertchaiprasert is one of the most important Thai artists working today; his art is in major institutional collections including the Guggenheim’s.

Informed by the Buddhist teachings of anatta (no self), Kamolpan Chotvichai challenges the limitations of materials in her artwork through the use of simple tools and techniques, such as cutting, which she uses to dissolve her own image printed on canvas.

Lavender Chang’s conceptual photography is a reflection of her sensitivity toward the physical and psychological human experiences surrounding her. She focuses these subtle experiences to create images that invite further contemplation, suggesting the passage of time, intimacy and morality.

Nino Sarabutra explores the human condition with her installation What Will You Leave Behind? Covering the exhibition floor with thousands of palm-sized porcelain skulls, Sarabutra encourages viewers to walk across the carpet of skulls while contemplating life and death.

Fascinated with the Rorschach test since youth, Piyatat Hemmatat applies the same technique in his photographic essay Titans, mirroring shots of nature he's captured in his travels, revealing surprising and powerful likenesses to human anatomy.

The sublime watercolors of Tawan Wattuya explore the cultural contradiction in Thai society, which on one hand praises social respectability, yet on the other coexists with the socially unacceptable—specifically the internationally patronized sex trade, which is rarely discussed openly.

A catalogue accompanies Anthropos New York. It includes essays by the curator; Professor Nikos Papastergiadis of the University of Melbourne, author of Cosmopolitanism and Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012); and Professor Maurizio Peleggi of the National University of Singapore, editor of The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

 

Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani holds a master’s degree in Asian Art Histories and is a lecturer in the Singapore LASALLE-Goldsmiths Fine Arts Programme. She writes for academic journals, art magazines and symposium publications, and works as an independent curator for commercial and institutional organizations in Singapore, Bangkok, New York and London, improving the visibility of young and emerging artists from Southeast Asia. Her academic and curatorial focus is the contemporary art of Thailand.

Anthropos
Publication
Anthropos
New York
Moda
Press
Moda
Thailand's Turn October 2014

Curator Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani talks about Anthropos New York, the exhibition of Southeast Asian art she organized in the gallery, and the rise of Thai contemporary art.

The Artling
Press
The Artling
Interview with Sundaram Tagore September 2014

On the occasion before ‘Anthropos’ New York opens to the public, The Artling catches up with the busy gallerist.

Blouin Artinfo
Press
Blouin Artinfo
Curator Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani on Anthropos New York August 2014

Come September, Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York will present a large-scale exhibition of artworks by 12 artists from Thailand and Singapore. Curated by Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani, Anthropos New York aims to offer some insight into the social, political, and religious dynamics artists from these two diverse cultures are confronting with their practices.

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