Everyone Belongs to Ready-made1994Rebirth of ThingsIdeal Art Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand As part of a group exhibition by Chiang Mai-based young artists organised by the late Montien Boonma, Navin Rawanchaikul sent a letter from Bangkok to the late Marcel Duchamp in France. Playing with notions of recycling in reference to the exhibition title, the letter was a complaint about globalisation stating Navin’s opinions on the […]
I, My, Me, Mine and Myself19944th Asian Art ShowFukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan Created in Fukuoka as part of a workshop program for Navin Rawanchaikul’s first overseas exhibition, he placed ten large blank books on the museum floor opened at the middle pages. The inside of the books were hollowed out into two rectangular coffin shapes with earth placed inside. Two […]
SUBSTANCEABOUTNONSUBSTANCE1994Goethe Institut, Bangkok, Thailand Responding to the close collaboration between two colleague-artists, this exhibition at Bangkok’s Goethe Institute presented documentation of works by Kosit Juntaratip and Navin Rawanchaikul. The exhibition included sketches, photos, video, objects and installation that referred to individual and collaborative works by both artists that had been executed in Chiang Mai and Bangkok during the early 1990’s. Gallery […]
The Silent Murder1993Social Contract: New Art from Chiang MaiVisual Dhamma Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand Influenced by Structuralism and the notion of life’s path being pre-ordained, this early piece was made in parallel with the themes of education and marginalisation developed during the early 1990’s while Navin Rawanchaikul was still a student. Marking the Bangkok debut for a group of five young artists […]
Voiceless Room1993Mixed Media A three-part installation series that was created as a part work of There is No Voice, a plethora of hundreds of old medicine bottles in varying sizes were each filled with a black and white photograph of an elderly person captured in their villages on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. Plugged with corks, the […]
Boy, Girl, Man, Woman, Old Man and Old Woman1993Faculty of Fine Art, Chiang Mai, Thailand This was another living artwork realised within the same series as the Fon Panya and Dee U-raporn piece that displayed two elderly persons in glass cabinets. This work comprised six people with different ages and genders, including the artist himself sitting in one […]
Fon Panya1993Faculty of Fine Art, Chiang Mai, Thailand A 72-year-old man who used to be a life model was paid to pose sitting on a bench for half a day. While staring silently at an old closet stocked with old bottles filled with photos of elderly counterparts, he held an empty book which stated his name, year […]
Fon Panya and Dee U-raporn1993Faculty of Fine Arts, Chiang Mai, Thailand In this living artwork that transformed the artist’s bottled photos of the elderly into reality, 72-year-old Fon Panya and his female counterpart the 64-year-old Dee U-raporn, were paid to model in two antique glass cabinets for half a day, each holding an empty biographical tome save […]
Egg, Bell, Rose, Water, Cotton, and Space1993Mixed Media Representing the six senses to Thai Buddhism, six open books were placed on the floor each with a square hollowed out from the pages. Within each square is a different object symbolic of each sense with one left as an empty space to represent the sixth sense of […]
Can’t Reach Up Above, Nothing Down Below1993Mixed Media Appropriating two classic hand depictions as markers to Eastern and Western philosophical positioning, this work diagonally opposes a Raphael image of Plato’s hand with finger pointing up toward the heavens, against a classic portrayal of Buddha’s hand pointing downward towards the earth.The hands are literally physically connected […]