Apichaya Wanthiang
Galleri Brandstrup is delighted to announce the opening of “GLEANED FROM," a solo exhibition by Apichaya Wanthiang. The exhibition opens on Thursday, 15th August at 6 PM and will be on display until September 28, 2024.
Rubber boots trampling dried plants. Snapping of branches and stalks. Stepping in and out of light beams. Bucket swinging. Left to right. Rough hands probing the muddy surface just after the fields filled with water, before the sand and water mixture became too murky. A dense wall of insect chirps. Kissing, or is it pecking the skin? Not one paddy crab was found that night.
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Rubber boots trampling dried rice stalks. Stepping up and down from raised surfaces. Snap, snap, snap. Light dots strewn across the fields. Black crickets spring up high, then bury themselves under the dried stalks. Homemade thunder machine: a large plastic bag, taped to a bamboo stick. Left, right, swoosh, swoosh. Tricking the crickets into thinking the weather has turned. And when they surface, thud! They’re plucked and put into a mesh bag.
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Rubber boots trampling moist flowerbeds. Rapid clack-clack-clack. Silence. Clack-clack-clack. Silence. Rows and rows of thin rubber trees. A mini dot of light in the distance, insect like. White liquid fills the scar-like grooves. Silent drip, drip, drip. Clack-clack-clack. Drip, drip, drip. Until the sky shifts from phthalo blue to violet red.
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In this new series of paintings, created after Wanthiang's recent trip to northeast Thailand, there are no human faces. Instead, the spectator is met with light in the form of beams or spots, which the artist uses to direct our gaze and erase information. This technique guides viewers to look in the same direction as the painted subjects, without revealing what they see. In this exhibition, Wanthiang continues to focus on what seems peripheral, latent and somatic.
Wanthiang paints with thin, fast-drying acrylics, causing some surfaces to appear almost washed out and unexpectedly dry. Her motifs float on the canvas, and vegetation takes on anthropomorphic qualities. The humid landscapes depicted reveal strange elements, as if things lurk beneath the transparent yet oblique surfaces. In these recent paintings, people are looking for some things that we cannot see. The figures often appear as outlines or silhouettes and the light becomes the main character.
Wanthiang employs both warm and cold dark colours to either embrace or isolate the viewer in relation to the painted figures. Depth is suggested through colour rather than perspective. At times, she places just the right tones of darkness next to each other to make the planes vibrate. She layers and layers until darkness is as thick and dense as a concrete wall, fascinated by the reversal of things: how light in these instances becomes material and solid form is dissolved into night.
Apichaya (Piya) Wanthiang (b. 1987, Bangkok, Thailand) holds a BA from Sint-Lukas, Brussels, and an MA in Fine Arts from Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHiB). Piya constructs environments to study how they influence our perceptions, behaviours, and interactions. She works primarily with painting and installations comprising light, sound, and text. Piya has exhibited widely in Norway, including at the Munch Museum, Kristiansand Kunsthall, and UKS. She has worked part-time as Assistant Professor at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and the Faculty of Fine Art, Music, and Design (KMD) in Bergen. She has served on the board of LNM, the Norwegian Painters Association, and UKS, The Young Artists’ Society. She is currently based in Oslo, Norway.