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Lot Essay
To deconstruct a classical image, Natee Utarit assumes a complete authorship of his novel image whilst retaining the culture references of the old ones. This is not a radical anti-establishment graffiti but a re-construction of the fragments, both in the emotional and formal sense, in search of a new order that is relevant to the present whilst retaining a strange, almost ironic archaic poetry as one recognizes the fragmented classics. A tension is inevitably created between the classic and the contemporary and tension that renders this work so very compelling.
Instead of thinking about his painting practice as an act of creation, Utarit views the act of painting as a mode by which to question the very nature of artistic creation and originality. He appropriates iconic imageries from many different periods in art history, repaints them in attempts to illustrate the concept of mimesis, or imitation, and proceeds to leave traces of their incompleteness and inherent instability as painting on the physical nature of the paintings themselves.
In Red Girl (Lot 448), the artist presents a painting whose formal composition recalls delicate silhouette portraiture popular in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. Utarit focuses the painting within an oval space on the canvas, delineated by a dove grey background. A pictorial format reserved for the intimate and the familiar, the painting portrays a seemingly innocent scene of a girl and a bird. However, the uncanny feline features of the girl, made all the more strange by the red hues of the artist's palette add a dimension of intrigue characteristic of Utarit's work.
Silent Laughing Monsters Still Life (Lot 449) enacts a visual commentary on the tradition of still life painting. While choosing to depict the traditional subject of flowers, Utarit's execution is decidedly unique. The dark background of the painting appears to engulf the luminescent flowers, while an additional veil of oil paint and woodstain lies over the surface of the bright petals. Deliberately obscuring the central focus of the work, Utarit disturbs the order and clarity of traditional sill life painting, choosing instead to confuse foreground and background. This is a powerful and challenging work that displays the artist's conceptual vision as well as technical ability.
Instead of thinking about his painting practice as an act of creation, Utarit views the act of painting as a mode by which to question the very nature of artistic creation and originality. He appropriates iconic imageries from many different periods in art history, repaints them in attempts to illustrate the concept of mimesis, or imitation, and proceeds to leave traces of their incompleteness and inherent instability as painting on the physical nature of the paintings themselves.
In Red Girl (Lot 448), the artist presents a painting whose formal composition recalls delicate silhouette portraiture popular in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. Utarit focuses the painting within an oval space on the canvas, delineated by a dove grey background. A pictorial format reserved for the intimate and the familiar, the painting portrays a seemingly innocent scene of a girl and a bird. However, the uncanny feline features of the girl, made all the more strange by the red hues of the artist's palette add a dimension of intrigue characteristic of Utarit's work.
Silent Laughing Monsters Still Life (Lot 449) enacts a visual commentary on the tradition of still life painting. While choosing to depict the traditional subject of flowers, Utarit's execution is decidedly unique. The dark background of the painting appears to engulf the luminescent flowers, while an additional veil of oil paint and woodstain lies over the surface of the bright petals. Deliberately obscuring the central focus of the work, Utarit disturbs the order and clarity of traditional sill life painting, choosing instead to confuse foreground and background. This is a powerful and challenging work that displays the artist's conceptual vision as well as technical ability.