SEX

SEX
Curated by Brian Curtin and Ohm Phanphiroj

Toot Yung Gallery, Bangkok
16 December 2011 – 20 January 2012
Opening reception 16th December 2011 starting 7pm

Imathai Suwatthanasilp
Michael Shaowanasai
Ohm Phanphiroj
Stephen Chalmers
Tada Hengsapkul
Tawan Wattuya
Thunska Pansittivorakul



Toot Yung Gallery is very pleased to announce an exhibition of visual art that claims a sensational topic in order to confront and play with its implications and ramifications.

Stephen Chalmers photographs rural sites where serial killers dumped their victims of horrendous acts, long after the fact. These works provoke the dark extremes of our imaginations while paradoxically refusing the spectacle of sex and death. Tada Hengsapkul employs pornographic and art historical codes to insist on sexual expression as a form of power and confrontation. His chiaroscuro photographs of bodies and couplings also demand that sexual explicitness and aesthetics not be considered antithetical. Ohm Phanphiroj’s sun-kissed portraits of undressed men emerge from personal encounters to become universal paeans to seduction and lust. Michael Shaowanasai examines the bland categorical terms by which transgressive sexual desires and practices can be represented; Shaowanasai re-images flyers and other ephemera from European sex clubs. Thunska Pansittivorakul and Imathai Suwatthanasilp appropriate symbolism from everyday life to suggest how sexuality can be a productive force in seeing the world afresh. And Tawan Wattuya faces the gritty, bodily, terms by which sex and sexuality is performed.



Preeminent scholars of sexual representation have long since pointed out that only the laziest understandings believe images of sex and sexuality to be self-evident in their meaning or significance. Moreover, it is misguided to perceive the production of such imagery as always relative to taboo and prohibition. SEX embraces complexity and diversity with the aim of raising urgent local questions about relationships between art practice, the politics and pleasures of visual culture, and the terms of interpretation and subjectivity.



TOOT YUNG GALLERY - www.tootyunggallery.com – 19 Prachathipatai Rd. 10200
Phra Nakon Bangkok Thailand - Tel: 66(0)849145499 - mail: tibayrenc@yahoo.fr

TUKATA, Post industrial Venus

A solo exhibition of Claude Estèbe
Toot Yung Gallery
3 Sept - 15 Oct 2011
Opening reception 3 Sept starting 7pm
www.tootyunggallery.com



Claude Estèbe is a French scholar in Japanese visual culture. He organized several exhibitions as an independent curator in Japan and Thailand ( including First photographs in Siam, Queen Gallery 2008) or as a photographer. He published The Last Samurais and The Dawn of Geishas. He was fellow artist at French Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto in 2001 and is now teaching in Paris (University of Oriental Languages) and writing a study about Gojira and Kaiju eiga (Japanese radioactive monsters movies).

No name dolls
This exhibition is about femininity, modernity and economic globalization in Asia. The tiny no name dolls used as models for Claude Estèbe’s photographs are a ghostly testimony of the millions of women working in small Asian factories for the sake of economic development. Unlike Michael Wolf, Claude Estèbe does not concentrate on the accumulation of thousands of toys; he isolates some chosen dolls, which have a sense of mirroring humanity emanating from their defects and astonishing bright pop colors. These toys were never intended for exportation in western nations but aimed for local market. Although they are mass products, these cheap plastic figures are still painted by hand, and their design retains something of their own visual popular culture. In this sense, these no name dolls are somehow fragile and human. Unlike the perfectly cloned copyrighted American fashion dolls with their stereotyped aggressive smile, the very own defectiveness of these petite dolls make them unique.

Divas
The first series focuses on close-up of faces. The thin plastic catches gorgeously the light and the defaults of the materials oddly giving life to the dolls, providing them with a human skin with pores and life marks. In sharp contrast, a unique perfect red smile is painted by an anonymous artist’s hand. The mouth, according to classic Asian esthetic, is small and closed avoiding showing the teeth. As Japanese writer Tanizaki wrote sarcastically in ‘In Praise of the Shadows’, the toothed white smile of Western people echoes the cold hygienic white of sanitary ceramics…



Agent Orange
Claude Estèbe’s work on some dolls echoes the concept of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in his book “Simulacra and Simulation”. Especially in his series of Agent Orange, the dolls, which are supposedly an alter ego of young girls, a way to identify with a perfect feminine figure, are almost lost in abstraction. The distinction between reality and representation vanishes. When the defaults of mass production go too far the dolls become creepy, with damaged bodies. These dolls have been copied so many times and with such poor material and care that their lack of realism pushes them away in an inhuman shape.



Global fairies
The arrival of the Peak oil dooms the era of cheaply made plastic products. These are already vanishing symbols of the decaying global trade. As natural resources decrease the pollution produced by fossil energies jeopardize the ecologic balance of the planet. Claude Estèbe likes to see the smallest of these dolls, made in Thailand, as trooping fairies of our times, helplessly witnessing the global weather change.



Tukata
Due to mass production constraints, the plastic bodies are dramatically simplified. Nonetheless, they are still oddly seductive and powerful, bringing back pure primitive energy echoing the animist feminine deities of the Bronze Age; A post-industrial mythology, showing a kind of “Neolithic intelligence” to quote Claude Lévi-Strauss, who linked timelessness with the savage mind.

For further information please contact
Myrtille Tibayrenc. Director and curator

Toot Yung Gallery
www.tootyunggallery.com
19 Prachathipatai Rd. 10200 Phra Nakon Bangkok Thailand
Tel: 66(0)849145499 - mail: tibayrenc@yahoo.fr

Familiar Faces
7 july - 20 august 2011
TootYung Gallery
Opening reception : Thursday 7th of july


FAMILIAR FACES
By Unchalee Anantawat

Toot Yung Gallery is pleased to present "Familiar Faces",
solo show by Unchalee Anantawat.

"I travelled around my mind, wandering around and found those Familiar Faces."


In the pond, Print on paper, 20 editions signed.

Unchalee Anantawat was born in Bangkok in 1982 and has exhibited throughout Australia and Thailand as both a solo artist and as part of Melbourne based audio-visual collective Tape Projects. Her work has ranged from temporal, site-specific installations and performances to colour-saturated text illustrations and she has degrees in Graphic Design from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and in Animation & Interactive Media from RMIT, Melbourne. Now back in her hometown, Unchalee is teaching as a illustration/stop motion lecturer in Chulalongkorn and Bangkok University and of course, still working her way out as an explosive young thai artist.


Crystal collectors, Print on paper, 20 editions signed.


In this exhibition Unchalee presents an installation and a selection of drawings, paintings and limited prints (for some) extracted from her book Observable Universe freshly published in Australia. Through this psychedelic gallery of portraits, Unchalee is introducing us to her intimate universe. An amazing technicolor family where human forms and celestial creatures intermingle, intermesh with sensuality and humor.


Lovers, Print on paper, 20 editions signed.


Threads man, 18x24cm, color pen on paper.

For further information and all works, please visit the Toot Yung Gallery website:

www.tootyunggallery.com

DUCKOCRACY by Mit Jai Inn

DUCKOCRACY by Mit Jai Inn Ephemeral installation to stimulate political dialogues
Thursday April 7th 2011 starting 10pm - Sneak preview of the installation.

Sunday 10th starting 6pm - Around the installation, poetry reading, slam and experimental music, culinary social art.




The Toot Yung Gallery is proud to be the scene of Mit Jai Inn’s Duckocracy from the 7th to 10th of April 2011.
Implying a parallel between his humorous and satirical installation and Thailand’s political system, Mit Jai Inn aims to open the dialogue of the engagement of Thai artists towards the Thai political disorder and the construction of the society. Feeding and raising a large number of ducks for several weeks, Mit Jai Inn questioned himself about the present political system in Thailand. Following books by Conrad Lorenz, he noticed that ducks can be educated to almost anything; you just have to place the correct information in its brain at the right time of his life. His readings and observations led him to think that Thai people were treated as ducks by the power in place and hence, acted as ducks! Inspired by the very influential book by George Orwell, The animal farm, Mit Jai Inn decided to build an allegorical installation reflecting Thailand’s society, people and power system.
Mit Jai Inn’s installation is not an end to itself but rather serves to unfold a more complex knot of concerns about how Thai people and especially artists engage themselves towards the current political situation in Thailand. It is an invitation for all (and with different opinions on the actual political issues in Thailand) to gather and talk openly. This ephemeral installation will be the scene for poets, musicians and culinary artists to develop ideas for a better social and political system in Thailand.
Schedule and details:
7th April 2011 starting 10pm:
Sneak preview of the installation “Duckocracy” by Mit Jai Inn
10th April 2011 starting 6pm:
Poetry reading by:

1. แก้วตา ธัมอิน
2. . ปิยะชาติ จองทอง
3. อโลชา เวียงพงศ์
4. ชัชชล อัจนากิตติ
5. อาณัติ แสนโท
6. สุเจน กรรพฤทธิ์
7. พันธ์ศักดิ์ ศรีเทพ

Culinary social art experiment by: กฤช เหลือละมัย

Slam and experimental music by Lionel Scherer (French) & Bird To Propeller (Thai)
Abstract music by Alessandro Alexander Stone Aresta (Italy)
The profit of the food and drinks sold during the 10th of April will fund a book gathering all poems written specially on this occasion, translated to English, available at the gallery starting May 2011.

Further information:
TOOT YUNG GALLERY - www.tootyunggallery.com
19 Prachathipatai Rd. 10200 Phra Nakon Bangkok Thailand
Tel: 66(0)849145499 - mail: tibayrenc@yahoo.fr

SKALL - SILAGI

SATURDAY 15 JANUARY 2011 7 PM TOOT YUNG GALLERY

Opening exhibition of Hungarian artist SI-LA-GI and performance by French artist SKALL

On the theme of society secrets, Hungarian artist SILAGI produced an in situ work during two weeks in the Toot Yung Gallery.

On the 15th January the result of the work will be visible during the opening reception starting 7PM. On the same evening you will see a playful and colorful performance by French artist SKALL.

SI-LA-GI

SI-LA-GI was born in Tokaj, Hungary in 1949 and emigrated via Italy to Sweden in 1966.
There he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Art and later continued his studies at the University of Stockholm (Science of visual arts). In the meantime he also worked with experimental film and photography in the 1960s and from 1973 also with videos. He was the pioneer in the mid-1970s who began making installations using video. At the end of the 1970s he was co-founder of the Video Nu Studio in Stockholm which gave artists the opportunity to create experimental arts. In his art he uses diverse media, including photography, video, sculpture and installation. His works are concept and philosophy-based investigations of impermanence, life and death, and individual opportunities. Between 1980-1986 he taught art video and painting in Stockholm. He has travelled widely throughout the United States of America, Africa and Asia, where he developed his interest in Buddhism. His martial art studies and long Buddhist retreats have had a great influence on his concept-based art.

more about the artist:
http://www.si-la-gi.com/home/

SKALL

Since the 80ies French artist Skall has elaborated a unique work between, sculpture, installation and performance.
This black sheep of the French contemporary art scene evolves in a world of Baroque hybrid figures and objects. The works remind of certain religious ornaments, in which relics, sculptures and amulets are presented on stands, in glass boxes, or cushions with an infinate string of decorative elements meant to highlight the presented object and lift it to a sacred stage.
As his sculptures and installations, Skall's performances lift him to a different stand. By accumulating chosen objects, for their beauty or symbolism his body slowly evolves in a non human creature. Every performance is a splendorous metamorphosis; An explosion of colors and forms giving birth to an ephemeral God, Faune or mystical animal.

more about the artist:
http://www.galerie-mam.com/index/index.php?id=21&subid=2&nr=89
http://www.artween.com/Galleries/Mario-Mauroner-Contemporary-Art-Vienna/SKALL-A-Light-Beyond-Darkness
http://vimeo.com/10106874

No Superego by Tada Hengsapkul

TOOT YUNG GALLERY 19 JAN - 4 MAR 2011
OPENING RECEPTION 19 JAN 7 PM ONWARDS

TOOT YUNG GALLERY
19 PRACHATHIPATAI RD.
10200 Phra Nakon
Bangkok Thailand
Tel: 66(0)849145499
mail: tibayrenc@yahoo.fr



Tada Hengsapkul, born in 1987 in Nakhon Ratchasima, has had a camera in his hands since the age of fifteen. This very passionate young Thai photographer uses film cameras and video to capture hidden identities of his homeland, Thailand. He has recently received his Bachelor’s Degree of Art of Photography from Pohchang Academy of Arts.



“No Superego” is a selection of recent and older photos and videos taken over the past 5 years. Topics approached are gender, nature, and sexuality;

Tada Hengsapkul’s photographs often awake a sense of nostalgia. Using mostly film cameras he favors the candid and unplanned over the technically polished and precise shots. The raw, snapshot-like quality of his photographs, evoke films in their look and sense of storytelling.



In his photos and videos Hengsapkul offers an intimate glance at “his” Thailand; His close friends, schoolmates, lover, family, neighbors, and also the nature, the Thai countryside where he was born. The freshness and realism of his photos shift conventional standards of image making in Thailand as well as old power structures and pre-defined gender roles. The crudeness of the nudes, the sexually explicit pose of his models, and the irony of certain scenes emphasize the gap between his works and photos which are praised by the local critique and censorship board. Hengsapkul is attracted by the reality surrounding him. As a response to the watered down photos found in the local magazines and television shows, Hengsapkul focuses on shooting reality with no artifice.

His works could be closely inspired by contemporary photographers such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Richard Billingham, Philip-Lorca diCorcia or Nan Goldin. The overall emotion landscapes sometimes resemble works by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.



This exhibition is Hengsapkul’s first solo show in Bangkok; it presents a broad selection of quality works. From landscapes to nude, portraits and abstract color fields Hengspkul’s photos all have a strong emotional and elegiac core which will certainly not leave the viewer indifferent.