Deep Storage: The Arsenal of Memory
New Works Laboratory: A Partnership Between 911 Media Arts Center and the Henry Art Gallery
Jacob Lawrence: Painting LifeUdomsak Krisanamis
East Gallery
December 19, 1997 – March 22, 1998
When Thai artist Udomsak Krisanmis came to live in the United States, he taught himself English by reading the newspaper. As he learned words he would cross them out in the articles he was reading. What began as a series of small marks on pages of texts gave way to fields of heavy graphite marks yielding an occasional printed word. Krisanamis’s paintings were similarly collaged from different material and dense with his painted notation. Consisting of shapes more often than bits of text, elements clipped from printed materials and newspapers were adhered to a surface and then surrounded with felt-tipped pen or swirls of intensely colored pigment. The large works are heavy, all-over compositions whose surfaces sparkle with infinitesimal lights and dark, paradoxically expressing the pleasure of obliteration and the powerful metaphor of unlimited space. This installation of several paintings was the first exhibition of Krisanamis’s art in the Northwest.