Pinaree Sanpitak
The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, August 2011
The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, August 2011
The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, August 2011
The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, August 2011
The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, August 2011
wickerwork
wickerwork
Photo by Kaz Tsuruta.© Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.
Silk, synthetic fiber, battery, motor, propeller, sound device
dimensions Variable
Silk, synthetic fiber, battery, motor, propeller, sound device
dimensions Variable
silk, synthetic fiber, battery, motor, propeller, sound device
dimensions Variable
silk, synthetic fiber, battery, motor, propeller, sound device
dimensions Variable
silk, synthetic fiber, battery, motor, propeller, sound device
dimensions Variable
Dyed and starched donated used bras
Dimensions Variable
Dyed and starched donated used bras
Dimensions Variable
Bronze with gold leaves
47 in (120 cm) Diameter, 16 in (40 cm) Height
Bronze with gold leaves
47 in (120 cm) Diameter, 16 in (40 cm) Height
Organza, synthetic fiber, 200 pieces
Approximate Dimensions 1000 Square Feet (93 Square Meters)
Organza, synthetic fiber, 200 pieces
Approximate Dimensions 1000 Square Feet (93 Square Meters)
Cast aluminum
Dimensions Variable
Cast aluminum
Dimensions Variable
Wax and titanium powder
Dimensions Variable
Saa fiber, ratan
71 - 102 in (180 - 260 cm) height, 25 pieces
Saa fiber, ratan
71 - 102 in (180 - 260 cm) height, 25 pieces
Saa fiber, ratan
71 - 102 in (180 - 260 cm) height, 25 pieces
Acrylic, pastel and charcoal on canvas
79 x 59 in (200 x 150 cm)
Acrylic and charcoal on canvas
79 x 79 in (200 x 200 cm)
Charcoal, pastel, gold leaves and Saa paper on canvas
79 x 74 in (200 x 190 cm)
Acrylic, pastel, charcoal, pigment and sand on canvas
86 x 74 in (220 x 190 cm)
Tumeric, pigment and charcoal on Saa paper and canvas
75 x 67 in (190 x 170 cm)
Acrylic, oil pastel, fabric and paper on canvas
75 x 75 in (192 x 192 cm)
Pinaree Sanpitak is one of the most compelling and respected Thai artists of her generation, and her work can be counted among the most powerful explorations of women’s experience in all of Southeast Asia. For well over twenty years, her primary inspiration has been the female body, distilled to its most basic forms and imbued with an ethereal spirituality. The quiet, Zen-like abstraction of her work owes something to her training in Japan and sets it somewhat apart from the colorful intensity of much Thai art. Her rigorous focus on the female form, explored through a variety of media – painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, performance, and culinary arts, to name but a few – has resulted in an astoundingly varied and innovative body of work.
For many years, and certainly since the birth of her son in 1993, a central focus of her work has been the female breast, which she relates to imagery of the natural world and to the iconic forms of the Buddhist stupa (shrine) and offering bowl. Often called a feminist or Buddhist artist, she resists such easy categorizations, preferring to let her work speak to each viewer directly, to the heart and soul, with the most basic language of form, color, and texture. Her work is not lacking in a conceptual framework, but it is one informed primarily by a deeply felt spiritual sense rather than by rigid dogmas or ideological constructs.
Pinaree’s work has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions in Asia and Europe during the past twenty years, and she has participated in major biennials in Australia, Italy, Japan, and Korea. She presented her first New York solo exhibition, Quietly Floating, at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in March 2010. The exhibition featured a series of large, monochromatic paintings of breast and cloud forms. Some are done in a soft, metallic silver, with delicate, textured highlights, while others are infused with vibrant colors that reflect the natural light of California, where they were painted. These breast/cloud forms also appear in a remarkable group of intimate works on Japanese paper, and in an installation of large, aluminum mirrors, cast at her foundry on the outskirts of Bangkok. As the exhibition title suggests, the works convey a sense of tranquility and weightlessness that is at once otherworldly and profoundly natural. Through basic imagery of the female form, they convey a powerful sense of humanity, of the quiet truth of its physical and spiritual interconnectedness.
In 2011 she participated in a number of group exhibitions, including Here / Not Here: Buddha Presence in Eight Recent Works at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Roundabout at City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand and traveling to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Negotiating Home, History, and Nation: Two Decades of Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia, 1991-2011 at the Singapore Art Museum. Her work is also featured in a solo exhibition, Body Borders, at the Art Center at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. In 2012 she will participate in a major international biennial.
CATALOGUE ESSAY
Please click here to view the Quietly Floating exhibition catalogue essay.
works
additional information
- Pinaree Sanpitak (2012)
- Pinaree Sanpitak: Quietly Floating (2010)
- Artist CV (PDF)
- Press & Publications