Saun Santipreecha: PER/FORMATIVE CITIES. A Nest of Triptychal Performances.
"We all turn in our hands an old, empty tire through which we try to reach some final meaning, which words cannot achieve." (Mr. Palomar)
This exhibition, curated by IKT Member Camilla Boemio and presented by Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, is drawn from, and engages with, three texts by Italo Calvino: If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, Invisible Cities, and Mr. Palomar, as well as the three cities which have paved my own journey to this exhibition: Bangkok, Los Angeles, and Rome itself. Working with and through Calvino's texts, the works in this exhibition interweave the visual and the aural, breaking the non-linear through relational modularity in both painting and sound (music). Throughout, the works employ a triptychal, scalable configuration, unfolding each layer, from the three cities' sonic imprints, to the performative, relationally-modular painting (video) installation to the three sculptural sound-works. The sound works themselves are created from the performative gestures of three groups: myself, the social contributors including alto flute performances by Cari Ann Souter, and the public spect-actor. Like the formative and performative actions that make a city, always an entwining of three elements-nature/environs, human/systematic action, and myth/ideology- within time, the works consist of these interwoven threads from the macro to the micro level - from the subjective to the objective back to the subjective and outwards again - where the actions do not end with me as the artist but both come from beyond and continue further, from and through systems that form not only the morphology of who we are but that of the cities we live in: embodiments of the disembodied, "spider-webs of intricate relationships seeking a form.” (Invisible Cities)
{Exhibition Statement by Saun Santipreecha.}
Exhibition will be on view from February 29 to March 15, 2024 at AOC F58 Galleria D'Arte Contemporanea Bruno Lisi, Rome.
Saun Santipreecha is a interdisciplinary artist from Thailand who works in both visual and sound/music art. His artistic route in both disciplines began simultaneously, studying privately with two Thai Silpathorn Award recipients for Thai contemporary artists, visual artist Chalermchai Kositpipat and classical pianist/composer Nat Yontararak amongst other tutors and mentors. In 2008 he moved to Los Angeles where he pursued a career working in music composition for film and collaborating with artists from multiple disciplines including fashion and video games while also creating solo music/sound projects including the recent Dandelye, before returning to visual art in 2022.
His compositional work in film, TV, and fashion has been screened in over thirty film festivals worldwide including the Cannes Film Festival as well as in New York, Paris and LA Fashion Weeks. He has also worked in numerous capacities in the music department for a number of composers including John Debney, Danny Elfman, The Newton Brothers and Abel Korzeniowski.
His most recent solo exhibition, Dandelye—or, Beneath this River’s Tempo’d Time We Walk, was in July 2023 at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). His next solo exhibition with this gallery is upcoming in June 2024.
He is currently based in Los Angeles, CA.