Fidelity Not Fealty
Sutee Kunavichayanont . Krit Ngamsom . Thakorn Khaosa-ad
July 3 - August 28
Curated by: Connelly La Mar

Fealty is not a modern notion as it relates to a robust and blind idea of loyalty, and it is not often a word used by artists except to highlight a pointed satire in their work. However, this idea is entwined with the art selected for this group exhibition "Fidelity Not Fealty" as it deals with a spectrum of ideas including iconography, religion, technology, symbols and art-making processes. The show seeks to raise a number of queries about those constructs through the work of three Thai artists: Sutee Kunavichayanont, Krit Ngamsom and Thakorn Khaosa-ad.

"Cease to Begin"
Somneuk Huangtanapan
1 May - 28 June 2008

"Cease to Begin" is a new series of abstract works culled from dozens of experiments by Thai artist, Somneuk Huangtanapan involving his notion of abstraction. He has arrived at a painterly geometry that wrestles notions of infinity that are religious, human, and interstellar all at once. The artist endeavors to entice his audience with the quaintness of repetition in the works, but examining his paintings closer reveal patterns more enigmatic than reincarnation. His circles are sexy but at the same time resemble and inflect all manner of daily objects from something as banal as money, to abstract traces of the sun.

The artist's universe is shattered here, however, by humanity that is ultimately embodied by his own hand. Somneuk's constructions are bound at the edges of each canvas and by the robust drips of paint that somehow shatter hints of perfection. Forms recede and are hollowed out showing their flaws and cracks when they can be traced to a brush. Using circular canvases in serial for the piece "New diaries," the artist breaks not only the idea of a contained universe, but a contained painting; these paintings bring his work into dialogue with everything ranging from urban development to calculating the distance of galaxies. Far from petty or trite, Somneuk's gaze is grown-up, self-aware, and at the same time gloriously sycophantic, about beauty itself.

Binran+Picnic
Masato Seto

Renowned Japanese photographer Masato Seto is being welcomed for his first ever solo exhibition titled "Binran+Picnic" in Bangkok at H Gallery opening on February 2, 2008, at 6 p.m. This one-time event brings one of Japan's greatest living artists to the city and is being co-hosted by the Japan Foundation, Bangkok.

Seto is the winner of Japan's Kimura Ihei Prize, Japan's most prestigious award for fine art photography, and his works are held in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York) and Museum of Contemporary Photography (Tokyo), among numerous others.

The exhibition "Binran+Picnic" will fuse two series of photographs by the artist for the first time that both deal with human role-playing and public space.

"Binran" is a new series of photographs by Seto that explores the idea of display and sexual commodification in contemporary Taiwan. It explores the peculiar and unique women of the cigarette booths in Taipei and along its outskirts. The booths exist as display cases for humans and a paradigm of sexuality in consumer culture, albeit with a certain misogynist tinge.

In conjunction with this new series of works Seto will show prints from his award-winning "Picnic" series of photographs, which were produced as a monograph in 2006. The series of images was shot in Japan and deals with the structure of 19th century European painting in terms of the public picnic, which is fused here with a uniquely modern and Asian sensibility in Tokyo's parks.

Differences are the success of these series in tandem with the crux of many pictures their affectation of modernity, consumption and capturing of human flaws. Photographs teeter on being hyper-real in their emphasis of wrinkles in a shirt, a converse sneaker, mussed hair or a frayed shoelace; all are the impeccable details unthinkable and in a way beyond imagination, but they exist in these mannered portraits through the astute photographer and camera, which observes with an unflinching glass eye.

"Binran+Picnic" is open to the public Thursday through Saturday, between 12 noon and 6 PM, and Sunday through Wednesday by appointment, from February 2 through March 29, 2008.
H GALLERY is located at 201 Sathorn Soi 12 next to the Bangkok Bible College and Seminary and is within walking distance of the Surasak BTS Sky Train Station. It can be contacted on 081 310 4428 or at www.hgallerybkk.com

In addition to the exhibition, Mr. Seto will give a special lecture on February 4 (Monday) at Silpakorn University. More information will be uploaded on our website as soon as the details are fixed.

Curated by Connelly lamar