UTTAPORN NIMMALAIKAEW BREAKS AWAY FROM THE LIMITATIONS OF PAINTING BY MOVING IN ANOTHER DIRECTION THAT CONFRONTS THEM FORTHRIGHTLY
Identifying yourself as a painter in the heyday of conceptual and media art (thanks to today’s technological progress) can be quite risky and safe at the same time. It’s a risk because painting is drifting away from the contemporary, but it is still an artist’s safe bet considering the tastes of Thai collectors who still prefer paintings when it comes to buying.
Image © Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew
Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew confirms his standpoint as a painter and continues to create realistic works where details are executed in a straightforward manner. His paintings bear no simplification, of which the abstract or other artistic trends have been trying to do as an escape to the phrase ‘painting is dead’ since the 1990s. Nimmalaikaew chooses to break away from the limitations of painting by moving in another direction where he confronts them forthrightly. Instead of following the convention of academic painting and using the laws of perspective to portray depth, the artist astonishingly renders volume by painting on a series of thin and semi-transparent pieces of fabric. The cloths are later superimposed into layers to give the final result of hologram-like three-dimensional visuals that seem so real to the eye and palpable to the touch. What’s more interesting is it’s almost impossible to say that his works are ‘similar’ or inspired by hologram technology considering how the artist has been using this technique since 2000, which was way before many people in Thailand had even heard the word hologram.
TEXT: Napat Charitbutra
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