PAPER TRAILS

THERE’S NOTHING CONVENTIONAL ABOUT RECENT EXHIBITION BY KORNKRIT JIENPINIDNAN, NEVERTHELESS, SUCH UNUSUALNESS HAS ITS REASONS…

Before the opening of the new collection PAPER TRAILS Limited Edition Files (2560) at BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY, Kornkrit Jienpinidnan had been hosting the exhibition of the same name since the 23^rd of March 2017 at 469 Prasumen Road. There’s nothing conventional about the show, from the site that is not specifically designed to be an art space and the installation that is far from the clean, crisp space of most art galleries to the 12 works of art scattered at different corners of the seemingly deserted room where guided circulation is nowhere to be found not to mention the unusual opening hours (Thursdays-Sundays from 19.00 until 24.00).

Paper Trails by Kornkrit Jianpinidnan, photo by Napat Charitbutra

Nevertheless, such unusualness has its reasons. The opening hours are intended to correspond with those of Ku Bar located across the hall from the exhibition area so as to allow for convenient supervision of the space. The location was chosen, not because of its cool, raw quality, but for its functionality that resonates with the contents of the exhibited photographs. The third floor of 469, Prasumen Road was chosen as the site for the artist is interested in the traces of the space that was once occupied by a publishing house named ‘Chue Choun Phim Publishing,’ from the scratches on the floor and the images left hanging on the wall to the presence of several other items that were left behind. As Kornkrit sees it, having the works exhibited in an actual space with which they resonate (not the purposefully built space of galleries), would bring a different experience to viewers. With the characteristics of the photographs that link the ‘space and time in the past’ to present (as viewers are looking at the photographs) and the fact that they’re being exhibited in a space that was actually used and has its own history, what happens is that the contents in the photographs are intervened by the memories of the site. At the same time, the history of the site itself is interfered with by the stories of the photographs themselves. In other words, it’s the superimposition of ‘traces’ to experiment with how new meanings can be conceived and what they will be. All and all, PAPER TRAILS was materialized using what we think is a pretty cool presentational mechanism.