Gallery VER

Gallery VER is pleased to announce the opening of our new gallery spaces, with the opening of MIT JAI INN ‘WETT’

at Gallery VER, Soi Narathiwat 22(Sathu Pradit 15) Narathiwat Rd.
Opening reception: 10 March 2016 from 6.30 pm onwards

Further expands upon his art practice though WALL WORKS new bodies of works featuring large maximal field paintings from the ceiling to the floor are half way between being ironic and maximizing every available surface within the gallery space/s pushing to question the other side of contemporary art in favouring of gigantisms and all the tropes of postmodernism – of large scaled installation and video projections. Here we see Mit pushing the physical act of abstract painting into dense and overloaded canvases that feel as there is no true beginning or end in the process of the act – thus dwarfing some of the masters of colour field painting. 

For this project Mit Jai Inn has produced works specifically for the architecture in the gallery. Using in part the site to directly paint these wall to ceiling ‘carpets’ of layered and textured canvases of glowing multi-coloured impasto canvases. Here we see a trick bring displayed before our eyes as Mit Jai Inn tricks us into – sensing a faux impressionism, but never quite giving fully to the viewer, that state of a ‘landscape’ as a ‘classical beauty’. Within these canvases there are multiple paintings pushed together into one final work. Going through a variety of styles, actions and mark making, processes and ultimately an historical erasure and self-censorship applied to the picture plane -creating a layering of meaning and a disruption thus to deny a cohesive vocal / visual statement – much as the current status Thailand (and historically) for Mit Jai Inn perhaps this is a way of applying culturally as a way of ‘getting by’.

For decades, Mit Jai Inn has been working on many levels within a focused and specific area concentrating on the physical act of painting, he sees within the specifics of the ‘problem of painting’ as a fuel to push further and further into this perceived narrow field – to produce multiple / manifolded results in his own idiosyncratic vision that is constantly being rearranged and reinterpreted. Mit usually leaves his work to be open-ended and encourages the viewer to percept, read, interpret and enjoy the work as a social action. 

Mit is constantly expanding and reinterpreting his own art practice. Within this exhibition, again he presents new possibilities in viewing his work, via his site specific installation of overloaded materially and physically via the maximal display within the new galleries architecture as a focal point of overwhelming the viewer with his plastering of the walls with canvases. Mit Jai Inn seeks new possibilities and emancipates himself from art historical one-sidedness, by blurring the categorization of art terms, while still actively being primarily a painter.

-Excerpt of text by Giles Ryder, Bangkok 2016.

About artist

Born in 1960, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Mit Jai Inn will be exhibiting a selection of works which hover between painting and sculpture, never quite fitting into either category. For Mit the use of ‘painting’ as a way of communicating his personal views on art and life, as well as the social and political implications of making art, are all key aspects of his practice. Mit Jai Inn has been a pioneer in the development of the contemporary Chiang Mai contemporary art scene. With his engagement with the Land Foundation as well as it’s precursor, and as one of the founder of the Chiang Mai Social Installation (CMSI), his projects extend to social change via art as well as a non-commercial art space that evolved as a direct refusal of neo-liberalist trends to appropriate Thai-ness and Buddhist iconography for commercial reasons.Mit is an active commentator on the current political situation in Thailand and has been internationally active over the past thirty years. Some of Mit recent solo exhibition includes Pastorale at G1 Contemporary, Bangkok, Thailand (2014), Postpositive: Freaky You Are Always at Sa Sa Bassac, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2014), Untitled at H Gallery Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai, Thailand (2012 etc. Mit Jai Inn also participated in major group exhibitions and international art festival include Medium At Large, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2014), 18th Biennale of Sydney: All Our Relations, Sydney, Australia (2012), Thai Trends from Localism to Internationalism at Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre, Bangkok, Thailand (2012), Dong – Na, Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2006), Soi Project, Yokohama Triennial, Yokohama, Japan (2005) etc.