Together with Alfred Banze I realized the first part of the international exhibition and culture exchange project „Exotika 2013“ in January/February 2013. It takes place at Silpakorn Art Lab / Sanam Chandra Art Gallery in greater Bangkok Nakhon Pathom. This was based on an invitation of Prof. Amrit Chusuwan, Art Director of the Silapakorn University.
The second part will take place in Berlin at Galerie Nord and Galerie M.
We selected 14 international art positions and 6 art works by Silpakorn University graduates. Nakon Pathom is a small University town around 50 km west of Bangkok. Director of the Sanam Chandra Art Gallery is the artist Sakarin Krue On. In middle of January we had speaches and workshops with art students during the preparation of the exhibition.
The artists Skall / France, Andreas Dettloff / Tahiti and Mu Yunbai / China joined us during the set up and workshop period.
Sometimes we met the Thai artists JiandYin, Amrit Chusuwan and Sakarin Krue On. It was a nice time. I guess, every artist got new impressions and experiences. The very helpfull compagnions of the artists, in Mu´s case the artist and translator Li Lisha also appreciated this creative and powerful time. Skall and Andreas Dettloff developed new artworks related to the Thai culture.
Sometimes it was hard to manage everything in our expectations of quality. I realized, that the way of dealing to create an exhibition is very different in Thailand and Germany. In Thailand the artists mostly have assistents who realize the set up of the artworks and make a concept in advance. Our way is to play around with the space and the artworks, to experiment with the location, to create a good and balanced exhibition. We were informed, that the staff of the gallery will make the exhibition set up, but at the end we did a lot of work by ourself, because the staff had not enough knowlegde about these art works and also language problems. The exhibition space is very huge, around 4.000 squaremeter. One week before the opening some areas were still blocked with the exhibition before, this continued partly until 3 days before the opening.
To get some of the art works very short before the opening was another difficulty. So I became very nervous after a while. Of course, we got a lot of help from Sakarin Krue On and his staff, but always we had a time problem. At the end we finished just in time but with a lot of tense…., it is not so easy as the Thai promised.
The opening was great, we cutted the band with the president of Silapakorn University, Mr. Ajarn Chaichan Thavaravej, after an amazing performance by Skall and another one by Silpakorn art students who joined Skall´s workshop.
For more informations : www.exotika2013.de