TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 173
8th November 2022
Dear friends and colleagues
To continue where I left off last week:
South-east Asian artists at Venice
1. Gerry Tan at Venice
This year, alas, there was no Indonesian pavilion and no Thai pavilion, so the only two pavilions from SEA were those of The Philippines and Singapore. I can’t speak dispassionately about the Filipino exhibition, as I wrote a catalogue essay for it. Obviously, I liked it! Also I have always followed the precept that you can’t write for an artist and then review the show. Some people do but I think that it is potentially corrupt. A bit like being a witness for the defense and then sitting on the jury. Anyway, of course, you can read the interview I did with Gerry at arttalksea.com!
2. Shubigi Rao at Venice
As for Shubigi Rao at the Singapore pavilion I must admit to being a bit bemused. A show about a book but with no book on view. There was apparently no catalogue either which seemed weird. All in all, it felt a bit like ordering a book from Amazon yet only receiving the book jacket. Did I miss something? I meant to go back and ask again but ran out of time: as always there was so much else to see.
3. Pinaree Sanpitak at Venice
And the curators of the Aperto (as it used to be called) could only find two artists from SEA for their 213 artists exhibition. Yes, I know, international travel has been hard over the last two years – indeed impossible during much of the time – but there is Zoom etc.
That apart I enjoyed the show – it was great to see such a preponderance of women artists – and far more painting than normal – though 213 artists was way too many for anyone to see and absorb. I have always liked the Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak’s paintings: the way her breast/vase motif is made of and surrounded by so many gentle marks of paint. But it was a great disservice to her to double hang her works. It discouraged people from going in closer to feel the intimacy of the works. But with so many artists wall space was at a premium.
4. Pinaree Sanpitak
5. Thao Nguyen Phan at Venice
6. Thao Nguyen Phan
7. Thao Nguyen Phan
The Vietnamese Thao Nguyen Phan’s three screen video work, a story about love and architecture was charming, with a little bit of humour, elegiac and at times beautiful.
8. Danh Vo at Querini Stampalia plus back of painting by Park Se Bao
Outside the official Biennale the only artist who is technically, that is to say by birth, from SEA – though his passport is Danish – was Danh Vo. The show he had curated at the Querini Stampalia Foundation of Park Seo-Bo’s paintings, Isamu Noguchi’s light fittings and his own photographs was disappointing. Yes, Noguchi’s paper lightshades are wonderful, (and I had not realized how many different ones he had made), it was good to see so many paintings by Park Seo-Bo, but Danh Vo’s small photographs of flowers seemed twee and his wooden struts (interventions) on which they hung were irritating. It did not work as an exhibition, not making any interesting connection to the museum and no real connections between the three artists. Park’s painting were, bar the single small painting illustrated here, all clustered together on the top floor as if they belonged in a separate solo exhibition
Entr’acte
Yes, this had nothing to do with South-east Asian artists but was a day in the museums at Dresden en route to Kassel. It acted as an at times shocking reminder of how powerful the best art is.
9. Dresden’s wall of Rembrandt paintings
10. Dix in Dresden
South-east Asian artists at Dokumenta
I normally allocate three full days for Dokumenta and end up wishing I had a fourth. This time my third day was cut by British Airways who cancelled the late evening flight home from Hannover, forcing me to go back the early morning instead. But in the end a day and a half were quite enough and on the second afternoon when meeting an old friend I was happy to stop and drink beers outside the orangery.
I had seen most of the art and felt I would not learn more by seeing more. An exhibition by well-meaning people making well-meaning art, but nevertheless the art ranged from the mediocre to dreadful. There was an almost total lack of originality… and the next time I see a room in an exhibition with a table in it and some books piled up on it and see it proudly proclaimed as an “archive” I am going to scream.
As so often on seeing collaborative art I am reminded of that old saw: what is a camel? A horse designed by a committee.
There was also, though I find it hard to put my finger on it a terrible sense of entitlement or righteousness about the whole event. Coming from a family of clergymen I have a nose for the smugly sanctimonious.
I have no problem with community art, but it is by a community for a community – local if you like. It rarely belongs in the museum. The best art is normally made by individuals – just as are novels and poetry – to my knowledge every Nobel literature prize has been given to an individual.
And I found it disappointing how few artists Ruan Grupa invited from SEA, their native region.
There was Taring Padi of course:
11. Taring Padi on C & A Kassel
By the time I got there their now notorious banner with embedded in it an anti-semitic caricature had been removed.
12. Taring Padi
Beyond a banner outside C&A on the main street they had been given more space than probably any other group in the exhibition: a large building to themselves and an extensive area outside for their figurative-sculptures. A full-scale retrospective in fact. I remember my old friend Bambang Toko who was part of another Jogjakarta collective in the late Nineties Apotomik Komik saying that they thought Taring Padi were very old fashioned and uncool.
But I like woodcut as a medium and I have liked the woodcuts I have seen by them. In the context of Jogja what they have done in the past makes sense. As consciousness-raising many of their projects have been admirable. But taken out of context and displayed in such quantity it all started to look very samey. Every print or poster remorselessly filled in as if Horror Vacui had become endemic amongst their community. The simpler and smaller the works the better they tended to be.
I should add for anyone with a serious interest in woodcuts that the prints made by Muhammed “Ucup” Yusuf, a founder member who now works solo, are more sophisticated and memorable.
13. Tarang Padi
14. Tarang Padi
15. Kiri Dalena
16. Kiri Dalena
17. Kiri Dalena
Was there nothing I liked? Yes, some fabric paintings by the Romani artist Malgorza Mirga-Tas Omata, a nostalgic video about places where Armenians once lived, another video, equally nostalgic, about Kurdish folk songs. And one work stood out, Kiri Dalena’s Pila (Lines), a five-screen video projection. You needed to watch all or most of the fifty minutes or so to appreciate it fully: the poor of Manila queueing through night and day for food from one of the community pantries set up during the pandemic. The people waiting chat about how to survive, where to get bargains, how to find work, who should win the forthcoming election. Funny at times, sad at times, it is a monument to the resilience of people at the bottom, queueing, queueing, keeping cheery. Then dawn comes, the pantry opens, people stand up, begin to finally move and then something miraculous happens: the film is double exposed and as well as the people walking to the pantry you see others coming back carrying stuff. It sounds like a technical trick, but it works. A sense of sudden exhilaration. A transformation rather like the moment in Michael Powell’s Matter of Life and Death when it switches from colour to black and white or in Chris Marker’s La Jetée when in a film composed entirely of stills for a few brief moments it becomes a movie.
18. Kiri Dalena
19. Kiri Dalena
South-east Asian artists at Frieze 2022
One thing I noticed at this year’s Frieze was how many artists from South Korea were being shown. Is that just to do with art or a sign of interest in Korean culture at large, fashion, music and their TV series? I also noticed how very little art form China was being shown. When you know how dynamic the Chinese art scene is, how many good artists there are there and how “hot” Chinese art was a few years back that was a bit shocking. Is this another sign that the West is drawing back from Xi Jiping’s increasingly intolerant China? Or merely a result of the impossibility of visiting locked down China these last two years?
As for SEA almost the only representation was a video projection by Martha Atienza shown by Silverlens Gallery. A work that does not translate into a single image. The camera follows a man on a boat sailing round the island she lives on. But he is extraordinarily still, standing as upright as one of the terracotta soldiers at Xian, and nearly as unmoving. He rides the waves, changes direction with almost imperceptible motions. So graceful. It is quite hypnotic to watch.
It was the only video projection in the whole of Frieze. That would have been unbelievable a few years ago!
20. Martha Atienza
I am off to Singapore next week so should be able to say something about the Singapore Biennale in December
Till then, look after yourself
Tony