The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

Navin Rawanchaikul was born in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, in 1971. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Chiang Mai University, majoring in Visual Arts. Since graduating, he has developed his individual style to maturity and exhibits his work widely. He is regarded as a talented young artist who creates continuous series of art works and who cares for society, culture and the environment. The environmental degradation and alterations in traditional values in his hometown and province have had a strong impact on the artist's work. His art explores social violence, changing attitudes towards religion, ancient cultures confronting new ones, the negative impact of commerce on the environment, and human intellect in modern society. The traditional cultures of the northern Thai towns are newly fraught with industrialisation. The physical changes in these communities and society's increasing denial of responsibility for these changes play a vital role in how Navin Rawanchaikul depicts his installations. These installations have distinctive conceptual themes and a compelling directness. His audience immediately comes to an understanding of his work. Navin Rawanchaikul creates in more than just one style, avoiding the narrowness of a single method of expression. He has had several solo exhibitions that demonstrate his abilities, starting in 1994 with There is no voice, an installation at the AUA Language Centre Library, Bangkok. He exhibited his work under the title Please donate your ideas for dispirited artist(ic) research at Art Forum Gallery, Bangkok. Most recently, he created a public installation and performance atThammasat University, Bangkok, called Treated, ozonated and bottled. In this installation, he explored and commented on Thailand's extreme pollution problem by bottling water from the physically isolated but nevertheless contaminated Mae Kha River. Apart from his outstanding solo exhibitions, Navin Rawanchaikul has also joined other artists in exhibitions, such as the '4th Asian Art Show', Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan, and 'Rebirth of Things' at the Ideal Art Gallery, Bangkok. In 1995 he exhibited in the 'Substanceaboutnonsubstance' exhibition at the Goethe lnstitut, Bangkok. He also participated in the project 'Art and Environment' II and Ill at the National Gallery, Bangkok. He is one of the principal initiators of the Chiang Mai Social Installation Art Festival. In the third year of this challenging festival, he presented Navin driving school, a very stylistic approach to visual and process art. In 1995, the artist held the performance Navin gallery, an aesthetics of immaterialism, which explored dimensions of illusion. Using a taxi as a moving art gallery, he posed questions about what we can and cannot expect of reality and virtual (or specially created) reality. He provided a schedule of location, day and time of pick-ups, including delay times. Navin Rawanchaikul suggests that reality contradicts reality in the modern world and that nothing is dependable. A passenger might wait in a certain location for a taxi, but the traffic in the city does not allow the taxi to get there or it is not permitted to stop in that location during rush hour. This clash of reality and our expectation of reality stops society from going anywhere at all. The steady maturation of Navin Rawanchaikul's work can be seen in his growing ability to connect cultural abstractions, such as Buddhist wisdom, to concrete occurrences, such as pollution and deforestation. His art challenges the intellect. There will always be people who do not understand his work. One of his most challenging works is The zero space which is not empty, first shown at Art Forum, Bangkok in April 1995. By presenting a theme on the practice of meditation in a restricted area, he invites individuals to consider themselves in specific circumstances. At the commencement of the Art Forum installation, he asked his audience to follow certain regulations, providing them with an opportunity for self– searching and questioning. The art expressed the state of an absolute human being. Inside the exhibition room, five white screens each displayed a different white word: I, MY, ME, MINE, MYSELF. Each viewer entered alone. He or she could not immediately see the white words displayed on the white screens. They became visible only after careful examination, inviting the viewer to honestly consider what I, MY, ME, MINE and MYSELF mean. Pondering oneself and staring at those Navin--41111. Lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand Drawing in response to Adialogue with oneself 1996 installation words, with their potential to make one look back at oneself, is very similar to the practice of Buddhist meditation. This may be a confrontation between virtual reality and reality. Navin Rawanchaikul has stepped beyond the familiar. People who come to his exhibitions may expect to find pieces of art they have seen before, but his work is in itself a new movement. His imagination tries to convey the true meaning of being one's own self. It asks if people are beings worthy of honour and prestige or if they exist in separate voids of hollowness and convention. Navin Rawanchaikul's installation for the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, A dialogue with oneself, may be compared to The zero space which is not empty. Both of them derive their power from the attention of the spectator and suggest that everyone lives in states of reality and virtual reality. A dialogue with oneself rearticulates the challenge to seek the value and meaning of art at the precise moment of viewing. The original objects for this exhibition included a catalogue, an egg, fruit, a book, and colour. Navin asks the viewer to decide what is art and what is not. He proposes that a created art object is not necessary-art resides inside the object through the creator's and the viewer's imagination. To appreciate this art, it is necessary to follow Navin Rawanchaikul's instructions before viewing the work. He asks us to prepare ourselves to face our own reality and the virtual reality of the art object in a room of real meaning. ThanomChapakdee, Lecturer,Facultyof Fine Arts, Rang Sit University, Pathumthani, Thailand ART I s T s • so UTH A N o s o UTH - EA s T A s I A I 95