Of Mice & Men
2019
part of ‘Louie!: Attitude Against Failure’
curated by Charoen Contemporaries
21 September - 20 October 2019
text: inkjet print on Awagami paper mounted on MDF
frame: MDF sprayed with paint and raindrops, wire, inkjet print on Awagami Paper
shelf: metal
text: 10.5x14.8cm
frame: dimensions variable
shelf: 2x68cm
The work is part of ‘Louie!: Attitude Against Failure’, a group exhibition of young millennial artists based in Bangkok. Sharing the frustrations of pursuing a career in the arts in their mid-to-late twenties, each take on a common Thai Northeastern slang หลุย (Louie), which means a failed attempt, a botch, and a glitch. While the slang is usually said with attitude towards a mishap in their daily lives, being a familiar line amongst the peers of the generation, what is considered Louie has multitudes of meanings, particular to each situation yet is symptomatic of the circumstances that they inhabit as a whole.
Putting together these multiplicities of Louie therefore takes on not only the micro-narratives embodied in each artist, but expands to bigger socio-political issues which structures those failures. This exhibition grasps at the unique youthful spirit and attitudes of these artists when responding to failure as a generation. It is light-hearted response yet spoken with conviction.
Can dreams become actualized, or are they aspirations that should remain untouched, so there’s something to reach for? On the shelf, the left text describes the artist’s utopian view of how the unrealized work should become. On the right lies the realized work; a framed image of a family picture taken from the scene in ‘A City of Sadness’ (1989). By utilizing the same vase within the framed image as the framing device itself, the image is domesticated and re-enacted. This re-enactment maintains the image of the real, but it also makes it unreal—a representation of itself.
