Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew “Dukkha: The Imagery of Suffering”
Yavuz Fine Art (51 Waterloo Street, #03-01, Singapore) Mar 8–Apr 13, 2014
One of the discoveries at Art Stage Singapore this year was Thai artist, Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew’s layered painting-on-silk installations shown by Singapore’s Yavuz Fine Art. The 3D visual effect of the transparent silk-curtain paintings is eerie; there is a sense of airlessness and nausea. The technique recalls that of Xia Xiaowan (b.1959), who creates painting installations with layered glass, but his work is about physiological distortions and repulsions, whereas Uttaporn’s are about lassitude and ennui, the barriers to memory, the dust collecting on consciousness. Sometimes the sensibility does tend towards mawkish and cliched, such as in “Fairy” but each work is so meticulously painted and carefully prepared, that their production enacts the devotions of memory, everyone’s everyday ceremonies against forgetting, the markers against absence. Of course, regardless of these acts, the paintings remain veils that separate, albeit composed of the dyed silken threads of life, at once strong and delicate, exquisite yet common.
Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew, “Buddhist Saint of the Children”, (installation view) (image courtesy the artist and Yavuz Fine Art)
Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew, “Under the Shade”, (image courtesy the artist and Yavuz Fine Art)
Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew, “Image of Inside”, (image courtesy the artist and Yavuz Fine Art)
Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew, “Fairy”, (image courtesy the artist and Yavuz Fine Art)
