Seongsan Art Hall

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, The two planets series - Van Gogh’s The Midday Sleep and Thai Villagers, 2008, photo, 90 × 90 cm
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, The two planets series - Renoir’s Ball at the Moulin de la Galette and Thai Villagers, 2008, photo, 90 × 90 cm
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Village and Elsewhere - Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, Jeff Koons’s Untitled and Thai Villagers, 2011, photo, 90 × 61.5 cm
Supported by the 7th Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2024

Working in video, photography, installation, and other mediums, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook places copies of paintings that might be found in venerable European museums in public spaces and outdoor locations across Thailand and films people viewing them. Amidst the sense of dislocation between the non-museum space and the viewer created by encountering these copies of Van Gogh, Renoir, Koons, and Gentileschi outside the usual museum setting, the people in the video begin to talk about the artwork.

Where a visitor in an art museum might attempt to critique the artwork while maintaining a kind of distance, these individuals treat the works almost as if they are scenes from real life. Through the difference in time, space, and experience, they engage in a discourse and critique entirely their own, rather than employing the language and logic of contemporary art.

In this exhibition, a series of photographs which is related to the video work is shown. The two disparate elements common to the titles of both works allude to the role of East and West not as opposites or objects of comparison, but as different but uniquely functioning entities that influence one another.