APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL

A haunting tale of a childhood horror film serves as the inspiration for Weerasethakul’s new work Solarium (2023), ^[1] an installation of two simultaneous video channels projected over a central glass structure. Recreating the 1981 Thai film, The Hollow-eyed Ghost, one of the videos portrays a man roaming in darkness search for his eyeballs, which have been stolen by a mad doctor in order to restore the sight to his blind wife. Ultimately, the man is destroyed by the rising Sun. On the alternate screen, we find luminous imagery, such as the sun’s radiant glow, or sun rays penetrating layers of foliage, sensing the warmth of invisible light. A double-glazed glass with holographic film in which the videos are projected allows the ethereal specter to waft through the darkened room, pulsating off the screen into our physical realm. The interplay of sound and light, traveling in opposite directions and converging on the reflective glass structure, becomes the defining trait of the exhibition space, oscillating between the visible and invisible, the seen and unseen—mirroring the complexities of our own human existence.

The artist remarks: “The ghost, like a filmmaker, is always in search for an apparatus to experience light. The title hints at the ghost’s inability to escape this dreamlike state, forever trapped in a solarium of his own creation, yearning for the warmth light of the sunrise.” Weerasethakul’s five-year exploration of light and shadow is materialized through a series of diptych drawings, presented for the first time in this exhibition. The monochromatic watercolors, reminiscent of the scenes from Solarium, encompass studies of light, shadow and eyeballs. Boxes of Time (2024) is a 5-part compilation of Weerasethakul’s personal photographic collection, archiving recently-visited locales during his artistic journey. Gazed through his lyrical, introspective lens, under rich and subtle textures of sunlight, each stack contains 52 images, layering fleeting moments of time in memory.

The exhibition Solarium marks the artist’s fifth solo presentation with the gallery in seven years.

^1] The inaugural version of the installation Solarium is on view until April 30, 2024, at Bann Mae Ma School, Chiangå San, Chiang Rai, as part of Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai 2023: The Open World, directed by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gridthiya Gaweewong