KORAKRIT Bio
I draw my inspiration from circumstances that have shaped me. I grew up in Thailand, surrounded by ornate temples and serene Buddha statues that contrasted sharply with the “Japanese pop culture” adopted by the Thai youth of my generation. During trips abroad, I visited museums and art galleries. In 2002, a novel interpretation of familiar objects at the Saatchi gallery in London inspired me to focus on Art in university. I realized that the powerful Buddhist images and the essence of my favorite Japanese mangas and video games could physically exist together through the language and conventions of Fine Art. A gallery space becomes a ceremonial site, where paintings and installations are artifacts of the visual culture I develop through phenomena and fantasies encountered in my life.
I have been compiling a library of abstracted shapes as letters to create my visual sentences. Possessing a psychedelic quality similar to Rorschach inkblots, the shapes contain representational details of subjects such as animals and trees, while others have roots in Japanese Manga. When trying to depict speed, movement and metaphysical forces, Manga artists often employ these graphical shapes to provide an aesthetically pleasing representation of an invisible force at a frozen moment. My paintings and prints mostly focus on these shapes to construct an isolated experiential space.
A predominant aspect of my artwork is the social participation of the audience. I started thinking about this relational aspect after working for Thai artist, Rirkrit Tiravanija. An audience completes the piece in the same way that a visitor completes the function of a temple. The result is the piece “I Love You”, which involves the participation of the audience in a cult-like musical event bringing a pair of lovers back to life.
The process of printmaking, especially silkscreen, is integral to the way the work is formulated. The unifying process of the paint arriving on the surface through a matrix is a form of programming that allows me to exert the control I need to move effectively. I am fascinated with the quality obtained from silkscreen: the flatness, the transparencies, the removal of the hand and the aspect of breaking down the universe visually into layers. In fact, this process directly resembles the way I interact with the world and to all of its information.