The Blooming of a New Sense (Self)
March 14th, 2019 — April 7th, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 14th, 6pm-8pm
SFA Projects is proud to present The Blooming of a New Sense (Self), an exhibition of works by Thailand-based artist Attasit Pokpong. This is his first one-person show in New York.
Attasit is highly regarded in Southeast Asia, finding fame with his signature style of portraiture of a Sino-Asian woman. Through his repetition of this single form, he has created a readily recognized icon. This icon has become Attasit’s vessel, a container for increasingly complex paintings-within-paintings. Much like Johns painting the “things the mind already knows,” Attasit’s use of a familiar form has freed himself from the need to create a new design and has allowed him to focus on the execution of the painting.
This exhibition marks a starting point to a new self-inquiry for the artist, an attempt to answer to his own work and ask how and where to go from here. A new conjecture is formulated by pushing his previous works through the lenses of self-portraiture and another, more globally recognized iconic portrait. In this project, he demonstrates “the process of becoming” by elucidating the transformative action, intervening with shape and form. Without a final conclusion, he is opening a road to the possibility of an artistic exploration, the stage in which he struggles, and takes pleasure with simply being an artist again.
In Eastern thought, all life runs in cycles. Here, with this exhibition, Attasit has found the spring of his new journey.
It is the time of a blooming-self.
Attasit Pokpong is considered one of the rising stars of Thailand’s contemporary art scene. Working in both watercolor and oil painting to depict portraits of an Asian woman, Pokpong often uses a contrast of pale colors for his subjects’ faces and dark ones for backgrounds, with vivid highlights for the lips and hair. Born on October 16, 1977 in Thailand, Pokpong studied art at the Rajchamongkol Institution in Bangkok. The artist continues to live and work in Bangkok, Thailand. He has had exhibitions in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Paris, Dublin, Edinburgh, Brussels, Japan, and New York; participating in different art fairs, such as, Art Basel Switzerland 2012, Paris Art Fair 2014, Asia Contemporary Art Show in Hong Kong 2014, Palm Beach Art Fair 2014, Art Taipei 2015, The Chelsea Art Show, Art Ireland Autumn Collection, The Edinburgh Art Show, The Cork Art Fair.
