Thursday 19 April 2012, 7pm

Opening Reception

The exhibition has been conceptualized over the last 6 years during his art residency programmes and participation in artistic activities throughout Europe and Asia. For this show he created over 120 interactive ceramic sculpture of human heads that were created at Thao Hong Thai ceramic factory in Ratchaburi. 

Jakraphun articulates the concept of changes in human behavior, influenced by fast moving technology through varied personas of human types presented in his sculpture and interactive elements. Inspired by the rapid increase of human’s virtual interaction with social media, rather than face-to-face, he expresses his concerns on obscurity, deception, soullessness, obsession and addiction or even the lack of good judgement that seems to flourish via these networks today.  While the real time and virtual aspects in social networks has become a crucial communication tool and beneficial to many commercial and mass information endeavors, it can also stimulate the divisions within society, often with distorted truths. Extreme opinions have been formed based on “facts” other people ‘share’, regardless of the truth or without careful examination of the origins. The question is  whether what we see or hear or have been presented by this new and dominant social world is real. How much truth is there in the faces we see in this computer-generated society? What is the real objective of each individual’s projection and statements? 

The artist incorporates his craftsmanship in individually hand painting of each sculptural heads, portraying a spectrum of varied characters, from extreme to neutral. Each head signifies a major element or player that he has witnessed in the virtual society —whether real or artificial.

Jakraphun Thanateeranon is an artist, curator, art activist and a writer. He’s been working with several youth art projects in Asia and has attended over 10 art residency programmes all over the world. The exhibition is the continuation works from his pervious shows titled 13.31 and Spirit of Japan which were created and exhibited in Japan in 2008. The content of the shows were focusing on human masks, tapping into the topics of deception vs truth, realistic vs fear, ghost vs god and religious vs belief.

The exhibition will be on view at WTF gallery from 19 April – 18 May 2012.  

Exhibition by Justin Mills

14 October – 10 November  2011 at WTF Gallery, Bangkok

Opening Reception: Friday 14 October 2011, 7pm @ WTF Gallery

A Smear Of Gold In The Window And The Jewel Of Her Sin 

 ‘To me, paintings are not silent and music is not invisible, so painting is just as much about listening as it is about seeing. I’m just trying to do something that I feel is valid and viable, to make a kind of image that I’ve never seen or heard before, a painting with a quiet intensity, as compelling and enduring for me as a good Tom Waits track, with an effect that is always instantaneous." - Justin Mills

After exhibiting his 48 Portraits Of God last year, Justin Mills has produced a new series of paintings inspired by the music and lyrics of American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, the man who once said that ‘there ain’t no devil there’s just God when he’s drunk’. Mills is still intrigued by the highly-charged symbolic materials of earthy bitumen and ethereal gold but he now makes the rhythms and rhymes of the lexicon, the darkness and the light, an integral part of the ‘visual’, significantly transforming the spatial nature of visual art into something markedly temporal.

The iambic beat of the exhibition title subtly suggests an interplay between rich layers and juxtapositions of opposites; rubber-modified bitumen and spirit-based gold paint are thrown together with coloured acrylics to render mesmerising effects of appearing/disappearing, invading/dissolving, solace/menace all of which are echoed in the uniquely visceral and lung-crunching voice of Tom Waits whose music gets played more than anything else in Mills’ studio.

His subtle intertextuality and mimicry, engaging himself in a complex and time-consuming creative process of drawing, photographing, and computer-editing, and an integral approach to style, sources and subject matter, results in a unique, innovative rendition of beguiling, multi-layered surfaces and enigmatic images, that makes it difficult to dissociate him from the current renewal and vigour of contemporary painting. 

English text by Rathsaran Sireekan, art critic.

All the paintings will be available for sale. For list of paintings and prices, please contact the gallery.

Justin Mills’ biography

Justin Mills was born in the UK and has been based in Bangkok since 1996. He is a graduate of Bristol’s University of the West of England and Santiniketan, Visva-Bharati University in India, where he was awarded an MA in Fine Art in 1994. Mills has exhibited his paintings internationally including ‘A Brief View Of Everything’ at Chulalongkorn University Art Center in 2010, the 2nd Bangkok Triennial of International Print and Drawing at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center in 2009, ‘Brahma to Bapu’ at the Visual Arts Gallery in Delhi, India, curated by Rakhi Sarkar in 2002, and a collaborative installation at the Outpost Venice Biennale in Venice in 1995.

Visitor Information:

WTF Cafe & Gallery
www.wtfbangkok.com
7 Sukhumvit Soi 51
Bangkok 10110
BTS: Thong Lor Station

Opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 4-10pm
02 662 6246 

For further information please contact:
Somrak Sila – Managing Director
Tel: (66) 2 662 6246, (66) 89 926 5474
Email: somrak@wtfbangkok.com

“The power of a diagram is massive: it is synthetic because it can describe a highly complex object in one image; it is enlightening because it can reveal knowledge that was unnoticed; it is engaging because visualizations are beautiful. It gives people the possibility to interact, understand and  deal with numbers, data, complex topics and intricate problems.”

•-•-•-•-•
WTF Gallery is pleased to announce an interactive exhibition, Addiction to Diagrams, by Gaia Scagnetti. The exhibition is an interactive and educational display of information visualization, showing how data and numbers can be reconstructed into fun and engaging visual representations.

FLOATING

29 APRIL –  31 OCTOBER 2011

Opening Reception on 29 April 2011, 7pm 

Exhibition to be launched as part of What The Festival – 29-30 April 2011

WTF Gallery is pleased to announce an installation of sculpture, Floating, by Sutee Kunavichayanont and the special pre-show offer available from now until 30 April 2011.

Floating is a work that invites you to contemplate beyond the physical realm. The sculptures are detached from the earth — like a consciousness set free. How so? From dreaming, meditating, taking drugs and alcohol or affected by a magic spell? Is it floating because of imagination, reality or deception?

Sutee Kunavichayanont is a leading Thai artist who encourages the viewer to directly and indirectly to participate in his work. Sutee asks the viewer to question, act and react to his works as well as to question themselves and the circumstances around them. Artistic themes that are prevalent in his work are strongly linked to the history and customs of Thailand. Overall his work is sensitive to art, history, politics, his audience and his materials. He uses various mediums including, fiber glass, neon, school desks, metal and gold leafing.

He has had numerous exhibitions in Thailand, Australia, France, Germany, and Korea. His solo exhibtions have been presented by Phuket 346 (Thailand), 100 Tonson Gallery (Thailand), Atelier Frank & Lee (Singapore) Thai Art Foundation (The Netherlands) Optica (Canada) and Musashino Art University (Japan). He also co-curated Thailand’s contribution to the 2005 Venice Biennale. Sutee is also a well known writer and art critic. 

Installations of Sutee’s have been acquisitioned by H+F Collection (The Netherlands), Singapore Art Museum (Singapore),Thai Farmers Bank PCL (Thailand), Thai Investment and Securities PCL. (Thailand), LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore),Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), Queensland Art Gallery (Australia) and Mori Art Museum (Japan).

Art Work Description:
Year: 2011
Technique: Fiberglass
Dimension: Life size
Material:Fiber glass; Yellow Neon

Edition of 9

100,000 Baht per sculpture (excluding VAT)

For further information please contact:
Somrak Sila – Managing Director
Tel: (66) 2 662 6246, (66) 89 926 5474
Email: somrak@wtfbangkok.com

WTF Café & Gallery
7 Sukhumvit Soi 51, Wattana, Klongton-Nua,
Bangkok 10110

Olarn Chiaravanont: Deep Dots

A Painting Exhibition
4 – 31 August 2011 at WTF Gallery, Bangkok

 

WTF Gallery and Café Hosts global exhibition “Change this world! 50 years of poster for Amnesty International (1961-2011)”

Sutthirat Supaparinya: Disc is Dead, Disco is Alive!
Installation Art Exhibition

12 January – 8 March 2011