Sep 17th - Oct 31st, 2011
Number 1 Gallery is pleased to present the art exhibition Already Mades with new three-dimensional works by Krit Ngamsom. Marking his third solo exhibition, the whimsical installation features a new series of mixed media sculptures that appropriate and re-contextualise significant creations in 20th century art.
A natural bricoleur, Krit has previously customised household electrical appliances such as fans, telephones, and lamps, into playful kinetic artworks. His art has explored themes associated with rural to urban migration, and the superficiality outsiders confront when immersed in the vapidity and excesses of urban existence. His earlier art highlighted the growing economic, social, cultural, and political disparages between Thailand’s rural populace and the metropolitan elite.
In Krit’s most dynamic sculptural delivery to date, Already Mades draws inspiration from artistic heavyweights Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Nam June Paik, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst. Having only ever viewed such masterpieces as Duchamp’s Dada Fountain (1917) or Dali’s surrealist Lobster telephone (1936) as reproductions within the pages of arts publications, Krit fancifully reinterprets iconic art objects that he has yet to physically experience.
Through fantastical realisations, the artist muses what if such artworks were liberated from their original physical and historic placement, how would they reformulate within a contemporary Thai context. Manifested as theatric sensational forms, Hirst’s pickled pelagic smashes out from the soup of formaldehyde to feed upon a school of fish, while ‘R. Mutt’s’ solitary sterile urinal clones into a multiple decorative and functional fountain. Other reconfigurations include Duchamp’s static bike wheel being set in motion as a fairground Ferris wheel, and an even kitschier take on Koons’ banal Balloon Dog, who spawns a litter of puppies swirling on a carousel.
Manifested as carnivalesque post-modern parodies, Krit customs an art amuseument park in which the historical significance of such pivotal artworks is celebrated and collapsed. Infusing these monuments to 20th century creativity with tangibility pertinent to the artist’s personal and cultural ethos, the original forms are imbued with local motifs that include a tom yum soup bowl for Dali’s crustacean, and Thai Buddhist iconography in a replication of Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha (1974).
To some, Krit’s unabashed focus on surface reconstruction could relegate his art as frivolous, but against the rise of contemporary Asian art, Already Mades can be read as both homage and derision to Western cultural dominance. Krit’s artistic shanzhai also has implications to authenticity, commodity, and the role of art as entertainment.
I’m Famished! (After Damien Hirst), "เฮิร์ต....ผมหิว", 2011
Mixed media,
87x280x150cm
R. Mutt’s Toilet (After Marcel Duchamp), “โถ.....คุณ Mutt”, 2011
Mixed media,
78x78x120cm
Duchamp’s Heaven (After Marcel Duchamp), “สรวงสวรรค์ของ....ดูซองค์“, 2011
Mixed media,
49x88x180cm
Surrealism Spiced (After Salvador Dali), “เซอร์เรียวเร่าร้อน”, 2011
Mixed media,
45x49x45cm
Kitsch-tung-Koons - I Miss You (After Jeff Koons), "คิดถึงคุณ", 2011
Mixed media,
80x80x130cm
My Ngan-Wat...Paik (After Nam June Paik), “งานวัดของผม....วิดีโอของ Paik, 2011
Mixed media,
75x125x151cm