Ocula Report Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber 15 Mar 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula In Meiro Koizumi's three-channel video installation, The Angels of Testimony (2019), the central frame features an interview with Hajime Kondo about his time as a solider of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conversation centres on war crimes perpetrated in China, including the beheading of Chinese prisoners for...
Ocula Conversation Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt is a curator working predominantly across South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013 she has been the founding artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a transnational art event that has grown in size and scale ever since its first edition in 2012. Backed by...
Ocula Report Chinternet Ugly at Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art 7 Mar 2019 : Mike Pinnington for Ocula China, home to 802 million internet users, is subject to sophisticated online censorship. This shrouded state of affairs, unsurprisingly perhaps, serves to reinforce stereotypes around conformity elsewhere. Any realm, digital or otherwise, subject to such strict scrutiny must necessarily be bland and uncritical, right? I was mulling over such...
Udomsak Krisanamis' practice has long been characterised by his specific use of collage, creating obsessive patterns made from newspaper, noodles, cellophane and paint. Over the past two decades Krisanamis' work has maintained a distinct formal and conceptual clarity, offering a unique experimentation with the well-worn territories of the grid. While his paintings refuse to adhere to any particular context or obvious narrative, his imagery has undergone certain key transitions.
Earlier paintings comprise of densely layered textured grids that resemble stellar landscapes, satellite imagery, twinkling cityscapes and blinking digital universes. Viewed in detail, these works shift between the worldly and otherworldly, the sublime and the everyday. More recently, this intricate detail has been replaced by bold, reductive statements of monochrome colours such as hazard orange and fluorescent yellow, the surface of which is built up from wedges of found material embedded between layers of acrylic paint and paper.
Born and currently working in Bangkok, Krisanamis studied at Chulaongkorn University, Bangkok and the Art Institute of Chicago. Selected recent solo exhibitions include Chiang Mai University Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2016; Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York, 2007, 2012; Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany, 2011; VER Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand, 2006; Gallery Side 2, Tokyo, Japan, 2005; Giti Nourbakhsch Gallery, Berlin, 2004; Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, 2003; Wexner Centre for the Arts, Columbus, 2000 and Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1999. His work has also been included in several group exhibitions at venues such as the Bangkok Art And Culture Center, 2012, 2014; CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain, 2011; Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, 2008; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2003; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2001 and Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1999.
