Silverlens is pleased to present four established artists from Southeast Asia for the second edition of Frieze Seoul: Pacita Abad, James Clar, Chati Coronel, and Mit Jai Inn. With an assemblage of colors, textures, and new media, each work in this exhibition shows a facet of the human condition informed by each artists' personal experiences.
PACITA ABAD: The work of celebrated Filipino American artist Pacita Abad (b. 1946, Philippines; d. 2004, Singapore) entitled Tropical Heliconia (1992) will be part of the gallery's presentation. Abad's works serve as a map of her experiences as she navigated the complexities of the world as a woman of color, an immigrant in the United States, and her political lineage in the island province of Batanes in the northern Philippines.
Look closely at one of Abad's trapunto paintings and one continues to discover pieces of her past and worldly influences — prismatically colored canvases, mixed media painted textile collages, meticulously hand-stitched sequins, beads, buttons, mirrors, and other trinkets collected from the artist's travels throughout Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. The influence of her nomadic lifestyle is evident in her work Tropical Heliconia (1992). The subject of this oil and acrylic work, rendered in vibrant hues of red and deep greens, is the Heliconia, a perennial plant native to the soils of South America. It is believed that this particular flora represents passion, pride, and the promise of a great return.
Pacita Abad was the daughter of a congressman, who had hoped that she would traverse a similar political path. But her life changed after a transformative year of travel in 1973. She chose to pursue painting and married a developmental economist, with whom she visited developing countries. Abad's experiences in each place influenced her art, incorporating traditional techniques such as ink-brush painting, silk brushing, batik painting, tie-dye, macramé, and quilting. Her work has been featured in solo museum exhibitions worldwide and is part of important institutional collections. In 2023, the first-ever retrospective of her works, curated by Victoria Sung with Matthew Villar Mirand, opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Her work will be exhibited in a solo presentation at Silverlens Manila in 2024.
JAMES CLAR: Filipino American light and new media artist, James Clar (b. 1979; lives and works in Manila, Philippines), will be showing his light installation entitled Parol #1 (2022).
Clar's work, though technical in nature, delves into the nature of humanity and how our lives are altered by the technological systems we coexist with, from the way we receive and process information to the way we communicate. The ground work of his practice is also deeply rooted in transnational experiences and personal decolonization, especially after his recent experience with transpacific migration. His works in his recent solo exhibition at Silverlens New York, By Force of Nature, draws from this and confronts its viewers head-on, inviting them to view each piece through the lens of the diaspora.
Parol #1 (2022) is a light work in the image of the Filipino Parol lantern or a star-shaped Christmas light. This treasured Filipino symbol, despite its links to the Spanish and American colonial period, is representative of an idea that the Filipino diaspora holds on to — their eventual return to their homeland.
James Clar was an artist in residence at Eyebeam Atelier in New York, Fabrica in Italy, and the FedEx Institute of Technology/Lantana Projects in Memphis. His artwork has been included in exhibitions at Glucksman Museum (Dublin), The New Museum of Contemporary Arts (New York), Pera Museum (Istanbul), Cam Francis Museum (Barcelona), MACBA (Barcelona), and SeMA (Seoul). He has been commissioned to develop large scale installations for 21c Museum Hotels (Oklahoma), Parasol Unit Foundation for the Arts (UK), and Fraport Headquarters (Frankfurt).
CHATI CORONEL: Chati Coronel (b. 1970 Philippines; lives and works in Toronto, Canada) will be presenting_Body of Research: Physical_ (2017) from her series entitled Body of Research.
Body of Research: Physical tackles the physical body which anchors the self to the earth. It is both a portal and a wall—an opening and an encumbrance. The eyes are instruments with which to see but also windows which the outside world can peer into. Like the three other paintings in Coronel's Body of Research series, Body of Research: Physical presents the SELF as the only true reference point for the human being. The physical body in particular, is the only true measure and the only real point of view from which we perceive space and receive the world. Body of Research: Physical is a self portrait from the inside.
The foundation of Coronel's artistic practice lies in what she calls Figurative Spatialism. A process involving layering colors, gestures, and abstract movements one after the other. These layers are then contained in a silhouette of a human figure. This final layer of paint acts as a window into her work, beckoning each viewer to step into the portal to another dimension that she has carefully crafted.
After receiving a degree in Architecture from The University of Santo Tomas in Manila in 1991, Chati Coronel deviated from that path and built in its stead a painting practice that has since spanned three decades. Coronel's work has been exhibited in galleries and art fairs in Los Angeles, Manila, Florence, Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong. Her work will also be part of Silverlens' The Armory Show 2023 presentation.
MIT JAI INN: Leading contemporary Thai artist Mit Jai Inn (b. 1960, Thailand) is presenting individual works from his ongoing series Loops and Capsule.
For Mit, the process of painting is meditative in nature: kaleidoscopic colors layered thickly then scraped, blended, and arranged intuitively using a palette knife or his hands. While in this trance-like state, he creates his color-based works that play on the boundary between painting and sculpture. Mit Jai Inn's oeuvre serves as a conversation between all things physical — light, color, and labor — and how they weave themselves into metaphysical, political, and social constructions of power and belief. His works are a tactile experience; each piece meant to be walked through, felt, sometimes even touched, thus, pulling you into the gradient of his Dreamworld.
Mit's recent solo exhibitions include Dreamworld #dreammantra, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai (2023); Ocular Vocabulary, Silverlens, Manila (2023); Dreamday, Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok (2022); Dreamworld, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2021), and; Royal Marketplace, Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong (2020). Recent group exhibitions include Aichi Triennale 2022, Nagoya (2022); SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2018); and 21st Biennale of Sydney, SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia (2018). He will hold a solo presentation at Silverlens New York in November 2023.
Silverlens will be located at Booth A24 at the fair's Main section. Frieze Seoul will run from 6–9 September 2023 at COEX, Gangnam District, Seoul.
September 6-9, 2023.
9am - 6pm Daily.
COEX, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea.
Limited full-price general admission tickets are now on sale.
The fair will be led by Director Patrick Lee: 'Building on the success of last year's inaugural edition, Frieze Seoul 2023 features a line-up of exceptional galleries from across the globe, with a special focus on Asia-based exhibitors showcasing the best art from the region.'