2 November – 16 December 2018
UKS

EXHIBITION
APICHAYA WANTHIANG: EVIL SPIRITS ONLY TRAVEL IN STRAIGHT LINES

Opening: Friday, 2 November, 5:04pm
Exhibition: 3 November – 16 December 2018
Interview: Read UKS’ interview with Apichaya Wanthiang here

*Scroll down for opening hours.

Employing installation, painting, and writing, in her recent works Oslo-based artist Apichaya Wanthiang (b. 1987, Bangkok, Thailand) ponders distinct ecologies.

At UKS, a breathing mountain landscape is the main character of her grand, new commission, entitled Evil spirits only travel in straight lines. Creating an omen, a prediction, or presentiment, this topography of dried clay is elevated in UKS’ main galleries, heated to the daily temperature of the sun-scorched ground in Wanthiang’s native Thailand.

Warm to the touch, yet rough on the skin, the part-sculpture, part-furniture, part-scenography constitutes an animated base that the viewer is invited to rest on, submitting to the landscape-bodies and their dark (potentially volatile) habitat set within the cold and dimly lit Norwegian November and December days.

Taking cue from both on-site and remote temporalities, the exhibition opens every day at the fall of nautical dusk (doors open at 5:04pm on 2 November, at 5:02pm on 3 November, and onwards—see full list of opening hours below). Meanwhile, the on-site hour is metered by the landscape-bodies, enlivened through artificial light at alternating strength, running in slow breathing cycles.

Entering through a rickety corridor covered in the high-glow nets of industrial construction sites, the exhibition choreographs audience members through a series of rhythmic motions. Screened on skeletal structures, two projections play back real-time footage of mayflies flying over the artist’s grandparental home. Projected askew, the images of the erratic, rash chase of the mayflies hit hanging synthetic nets. Layering the projection surfaces, the blurred transmission of the mayflies’ hasty flight lines from Thai-time to Oslo-hours is emphasized—as is the disorientation, the detour of this travel.

By heating the topography to match current temperatures in Thailand, while transmitting sound and image of the iconographic mayfly, Wanthiang creates a complex temporal amalgam—and in this a contemporaneous political gesture. The darkness of Evil spirits only travel in straight lines is saturated by critical concerns of how we always already live and partake in more than our own insular or individual time. While situated in Oslo and submitted to the real time of Oslo dusk, when the dark blue of the night sky turns pitch-black, Wanthiang’s installation evokes the deep time of the breathing mountains—mythic in many cultures, not least the Norwegian landscape that rises, as the national hymn says, “rugged, weathered, above the sea.”

To read the exhibition text in its entirety, download the PDF on the bottom of this page.

 

Opening hours (Wednesday – Sunday):

03 November, 5:02–7:02pm
04 November, 4:59–6:59pm
07 November, 4:53–6:53pm
08 November, 4:51–6:51pm
09 November, 4:48–6:48pm
10 November, 4:46–6:46pm
11 November, 4:44–6:44pm
14 November, 4:39–6:39pm
15 November, 4:37–6:37pm
16 November, 4:35–6:35pm
17 November, 4:33–6:33pm
18 November, 4:31–6:31pm
21 November, 4:27–6:27pm
22 November, 4:25–6:25pm
23 November, 4:24–6:24pm
24 November, 4:22–6:22pm
25 November, 4:21–6:21pm
28 November, 4:17–6:17pm
29 November, 4:16–6:16pm
30 November, 4:15–6:15pm
01 December, 4:14–6:14pm
02 December, 4:13–6:13pm
05 December, 4:11–6:11pm
06 December, 4:10–6:10pm
07 December, 4:10–6:10pm
08 December, 4:09–6:09pm
09 December, 4:09–6:09pm
12 December, 4:08–6:08pm
13 December, 4:08–6:08pm
14 December, 4:08–6:08pm
15 December, 4:08–6:08pm
16 December, 4:08–6:08pm

 

Credits:
Design and construction of wood, drywall, and fabric structures: Cristian Stefanescu (a-works)
IT-development: Sindre Sørensen
Cinematography (Spirit Festival) and installation: Markus Moestue
Installation: David Valen Aadland, Roderick Hietbrink (UKS)

 

BIOGRAPHY:
Apichaya Wanthiang (b. 1987, Bangkok, Thailand) has Thai and Belgian roots and is today living in Norway. Working with conspicuous climatic conditions, in 2017 Wanthiang collaborated with Ming Hwa Yeh on a contemporary dance piece for the Tapei Performing Arts Centre prompted by the life cycle of the Magicicada—a North American cicada with a seventeen-year developmental phase. In 2018 the artist depicted the informal housing floating on the water in the outskirts of Bangkok in a series of colorflooded paintings exhibited at gallery LNM in Oslo. In addition, Wanthiang recently collaborated with Louise Dany, Oslo (2017) and exhibited at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2016; 2018); USF-visningrommet, Bergen (2014); and Stiftelsen 3.14, Bergen (2016). Within the scope of art education, she has worked with, among other places, Bergen Centre for Electronic Art (BEK); Bergen Academy of Art and Design; and is currently an Assistant Professor at Trondheim Academy.

 

 

PRESS:

– Interview in Kunstkritikk (online journal)
I åndenes hus, Kunstkritikk, 02.11.2018

– Interview in Subjekt (online journal)
– Det er viktig å føle seg noenlunde selvsikker, Subjekt, 05.11.2018

– Review in Subjekt (online journal)
Onde ånder i Oslos tussmørke, Subjekt, 14.11.2018

Images from the opening of “Evil spirits only travel in straight lines” by Apichaya Wanthiang at UKS. All photos by Jan Khür

Apichaya Wanthiang: “Evil spirits only travel in straight lines” at UKS

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