Wittawat Tongkeaw’s exhibition Re/Place opened at VS Gallery in Bangkok on 30th January, and runs until 30th March. As in the artist’s other recent exhibitions, he uses colours and numbers as coded references to Thai politics. The Re/Place paintings are also a fusion of his earlier landscape paintings and his increasing shift towards geometric abstraction, as each piece is an existing work with new overpainting.
Wittawat has worked consistently with the colour blue, in his 841.594 exhibition and his Imagining Law-abiding Citizens portrait series. (The colour has a symbolic meaning, derived from the Thai flag.) Two paintings in the Re/Place exhibition—Orange and Blue and Blue Dots—depict contrasts between blue and orange, with orange dominating, and orange is the colour of the progressive People’s Party, which called for reform of the lèse-majesté law.
Similarly, Wittawat has painted dramatic sunsets in which blue skies give way to bright orange sunlight, shown at the Mango Art Festival 2024. The Re/Place exhibition features another of these sunset paintings, Fire in the Sky, to which Wittawat has added quotations from monarchy-reform campaigner Arnon Nampa’s letters from prison. He has also added quotes from Arnon’s letters to a second painting, Blue Wave.
One of the works with the most extensive overpainting is Blues Square, which is now entirely blue. In the centre, Wittawat has added a drawing of Arnon by the campaigner’s daughter, a reminder that political prisoners are separated from their families. Wittawat previously painted a portrait of Arnon, Captain Justice (ทนายอานนท์), which had a blue background in reference both to the Thai flag and to the colour’s idiomatic meaning (sadness). That double meaning is repeated in the title Blues Square.
The Blues Square canvas measures 112cm², like Wittawat’s geometric abstraction series shown in the Symphony of Colours group exhibition at M Contemporary in Bangkok last year. Also, the Re/Place catalogue is being sold for ฿112, and these amounts are not coincidental, as lèse-majesté is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.
Wittawat has worked consistently with the colour blue, in his 841.594 exhibition and his Imagining Law-abiding Citizens portrait series. (The colour has a symbolic meaning, derived from the Thai flag.) Two paintings in the Re/Place exhibition—Orange and Blue and Blue Dots—depict contrasts between blue and orange, with orange dominating, and orange is the colour of the progressive People’s Party, which called for reform of the lèse-majesté law.
Similarly, Wittawat has painted dramatic sunsets in which blue skies give way to bright orange sunlight, shown at the Mango Art Festival 2024. The Re/Place exhibition features another of these sunset paintings, Fire in the Sky, to which Wittawat has added quotations from monarchy-reform campaigner Arnon Nampa’s letters from prison. He has also added quotes from Arnon’s letters to a second painting, Blue Wave.
One of the works with the most extensive overpainting is Blues Square, which is now entirely blue. In the centre, Wittawat has added a drawing of Arnon by the campaigner’s daughter, a reminder that political prisoners are separated from their families. Wittawat previously painted a portrait of Arnon, Captain Justice (ทนายอานนท์), which had a blue background in reference both to the Thai flag and to the colour’s idiomatic meaning (sadness). That double meaning is repeated in the title Blues Square.
The Blues Square canvas measures 112cm², like Wittawat’s geometric abstraction series shown in the Symphony of Colours group exhibition at M Contemporary in Bangkok last year. Also, the Re/Place catalogue is being sold for ฿112, and these amounts are not coincidental, as lèse-majesté is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.
Another painting in the Re/Place exhibition features a different colour and number: army green and thirteen, both in reference to the thirteen successful military coups in Thai political history. Thirteen Green Lines uses vertical stripes of varying thickness to indicate the relative timespans of each coup.
Nineteen Degree, like Blues Square, has been entirely overpainted: the original portrait underneath has been replaced by an intentionally uncontroversial view of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Nineteen Degree is displayed in such a way that both the front and back of the canvas can be seen, in a continuation of that painting’s exhibition history.
At a previous exhibition, The L/Royal Monument (นิ/ราษฎร์), Nineteen Degree’s canvas was shown facing the wall, leaving only its reverse on display. (At that time, the portrait had not yet been overpainted with the Parisian scene.) Nineteen Degree is the work’s third title: the original portrait was titled พระเกียรติคุณ กว้างใหญ่ไพศาล (‘his honour spread far and wide’), and at The L/Royal Monument the visible reverse of the canvas was titled The Masterpiece (มาสเตอร์พีซ).
Nineteen Degree, like Blues Square, has been entirely overpainted: the original portrait underneath has been replaced by an intentionally uncontroversial view of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Nineteen Degree is displayed in such a way that both the front and back of the canvas can be seen, in a continuation of that painting’s exhibition history.
At a previous exhibition, The L/Royal Monument (นิ/ราษฎร์), Nineteen Degree’s canvas was shown facing the wall, leaving only its reverse on display. (At that time, the portrait had not yet been overpainted with the Parisian scene.) Nineteen Degree is the work’s third title: the original portrait was titled พระเกียรติคุณ กว้างใหญ่ไพศาล (‘his honour spread far and wide’), and at The L/Royal Monument the visible reverse of the canvas was titled The Masterpiece (มาสเตอร์พีซ).
