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THE ALCHEMIST’S LAB – Text by Prabda Yoon
One clue to help reveal an artist’s mind web is his or her studio. Thaiwijit’s territory of abstract experimentation – a rented two-story house hidden deep in one of Bangkok’s many narrow deep residential streets – greets visitors with an immediate and friendly invitation to its tenant’s artistic treasure. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say junk, fabulous junk.
In the front yard, skeletons of old rusty furniture pile up higher than the height of an average person. Pieces of painted wooden sticks lean vibrantly against colorful walls. Strange cement pots lie around seemingly at random, holding simple plants. To say that the place is a cemetery of broken objects would not be too farfetched. But the objects are only broken in the eyes of those who see them as once being parts of functional designs, purposeful things such as bicycles, electrical fans, tables, and chairs. When such useful objects break down and become useless, most people throw them away. A broken bicycle is no longer worthy of the name ‘bicycle’. It is nothing, and therefore it should be rid of. Why keep a non-living nothing?
In the eyes of someone like Thaiwijit, however, a broken object is not just dead material. The lack of function transcends it to another level of usefulness, a king of mysterious potential - the potential to become art.
The stuff Thaiwijit keeps around in his studio reflects the manner in which he paints. Over the recent years, Thaiwijit has been collecting all kind of useless objects and making them useful in his own ways. He has assembled them into new lives. This act of creativity has surely added a new, awesome side to Thaiwijit and making him arguable the most versatile artist working in Thailand at present.
But Thaiwijit is first and foremost a painter. A painter of colours, lines, shapes and most importantly, but probably least visible to the naked eye, he is a painter of hope.
Ever since some artists began to see themselves not merely as craftsmen but more as intellectuals, the art world seems to have been divided into two schools of thoughts. And when artists from the two schools engage in a conversation, it almost resembles a confrontation of believers from different religions. Their main dilemma can be narrowed down to one question: should art be for and about society or can it simply be personal and for the sake of aesthetics?
As an ex-art student and occasional artist, I do not care for such dilemma, and frankly, I find the division silly and unnecessary. To me, making art is the closest we humans can get to freedom, and to barricade it with restricted purposes is simply absurd. The way I see it, since we belong to a society, it is inevitable for us to produce anything that is completely oblivious to our surroundings. At the very least, we are automatically inspired and influenced by the way the works behaves. Therefore no artist can create art that is only for art’s sake. And on the other hand, no artist can create art that is entirely impersonal, either. Wherever there is art, I think it is both something personal and sociological. There is no need for separation. An abstract expressionist painting can be as much a reflection or a comment on society as a conceptual performance about corruption in politics. And that performance can be as much a display of aesthetics as a Matisse. Art is about freedom to express, not about purpose.
Thaiwijit’s art has never strayed from that sense of wonderful freedom. Like any alchemist, he is always a disciple of magic. And like a good alchemist, he does not do it for his own sake. The magic transports from his mind to the spectator’s without any kind of force. Thaiwijit’s art, apart from being magical, is contagious. Looking at all that freedom can make one feel free.
The heavy layers and thick globs of paint on the surface of Thaiwijit’s paintings show more than just aesthetic decisions. There is also history, experience, experimentation, and play. The sense of time is more profound than words and meanings, and one can definitely feel time in all of Thaiwijit’s paintings. What’s more, one feels that it’s all valuable time.
Being at this alchemist’s lab and seeing all the useless objects lying around, one cannot help but feel grateful. An opportunity to witness things waiting to be given new life doesn’t come too often.
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