Reviews artasiapacific.com^135Opposite page
Installation view of “Enchantment as Function:
Revisiting Postmodernism” section, “Shifting
Objectives: Design from the M+ Collection,”
at M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong, 2016–17.
Photo by Timon Wehrli, Red Dog Studio.
Courtesy M+, Hong Kong.
This page
KAMIN LERTCHAIPRASERT
No Past, No Present, No Future
2015
Mixed media, dimension variable.
Courtesy MAIIAM Contemporary
Art Museum, Chiang Mai.
CHIANG MAI
MAIIAM Contemporary Art MuseumAt Chiang Mai’s MAIIAM Contemporary Art
Museum, Thai artist Kamin Lertchaiprasert,
who organized his own retrospective, exhibited
artworks that were created as part of his own
spiritual cultivation. By melding art production
and meditation, the artist sought to anchor his
ever-itinerant mind in the present moment.
In the museum, Kamin’s drawings, paintings,
wax sculptures, pottery, Zen calligraphy
brushworks and even a video of the artist riding
a bicycle were on display. In her essay for the
show’s catalog, independent curator June Yap
writes that Kamin’s creations are junctures where
“art practice and spiritual practice... ‘disappear’
into each other.” The artist’s offerings propose
that art-making must be executed as one of many
techniques of vipassana—the activity of seeing
things as they truly are, arising and passing away.
The artist maintains that time becomes
meaningless with sustained attention to the
present, and even stops when compassion takes
place—a situation in which the partition that
separates individuals and creates spatial duality
is overcome. “This sense of becoming one creates
the feeling of nonexistence,” Kamin states in a
video that introduced the show. “When we cease
to exist, time no longer affects us.”
Indeed, compassion took center stage in this
retrospective. Living Kindness (2016), which
viewers saw first upon entering the exhibition
space, is an uncannily lifelike sculpture of a young
woman peering at a vulnerable, newborn mouse
that is delicately nestled in her hands. It was
created to commemorate an illuminating moment
of compassion witnessed by the artist: when
Kamin’s assistant Ting Chu found an abandoned
mouse pup in a corner of the artist’s studio, she
advised him, without hesitation, to feed it.
Those familiar with Kamin’s midcareer
developments, such as his communal project “TheLand” (1998– ) that blends agriculture with social
interplay and art-making, may be surprised to see
that the notions of timelessness and compassion
were presented not as an interactive experience
but as concepts embodied in objects at MAIIAM.
In this exhibition, the perception of timelessness
was communicated through sculptural
monumentalization—a mode of presentation
that unwittingly reinstated the existence and
passing of time. Central to “The Timeless Present
Moment” was, therefore, the conflict between
desires to let go of space and time, and the tugging
impulse to embrace them again. This culminated
in No Past, No Present, No Future (2015), a wax
sculpture replication of Kamin’s nude self seated
in the lotus position.
This incongruity was also reflected in one
of Kamin’s curatorial decisions. When asked
why his ongoing mobile exhibition project “31st
Century Museum of Contemporary Spirit” was
not included in this retrospective, the artist said,
“Bringing in the 31st Century as an exhibit, an art
object, would reduce its value.” Kamin’s comment
reflected an elevation of interactive experiences
in his worldview, even dismissing the status of
physical objects that are relaying his message in
“The Timeless Present Moment.”
Kamin is said to be inspired by the renowned,
late Montien Boonma, who was heavily influenced
by Buddhist beliefs. This genealogy was made
clear in Kamin’s presentation of Nothing Special
(2014–15), an impressive installation of 364
ceramic tea bowls arranged in a ring. He had
produced one bowl a day, inscribing a word on
each of the first 277 to ponder its meaning. The
remaining 87 he left unwritten as he graduated to
meditations on emptiness for the rest of the year.
The installation reminded viewers of Montien’s
Alm and his Drawing of the Mind Training and
the Bowls of the Mind (both 1992)—the former is
a sculptural installation of Buddhist alms bowls
with gilded interiors, and the latter is a sequence
of crayon-on-paper drawings of, again, alms bowls.
Unlike Montien, who focused on the spiritual
impact of his “sacred” installations on the viewer,
Kamin’s ceramic creations in Nothing Special
were conduits for meditation, and anchored the
presentation at MAIIAM as finished products of
the artist’s own mindful cultivation.
RATHSARAN SIREEKANKAMIN LERTCHAIPRASERT
THE TIMELESS PRESENT MOMENT