Coex
Focus Asia | F5
September 6-9, 2023
Nova Contemporary is proud to present a solo presentation of paintings by Prae Pupityastaporn at Focus Asia, Frieze Seoul 2023. Featuring a new series of large-scale diptychs and paired works, Pupityastaporn envelops viewers in a pastel haze of careful configuration. In this ambitious cycle of works, the artist orchestrates various scenes of subtle nuance, producing images that are sentimental yet enigmatic.
Pupityastaporn shifts between the imagined and the experienced, envisioning fantasised landscapes while also drawing from her time in Prachuap Khiri Khan, a western province of Thailand. Each set of paintings emerges in unison, resembling two near-identical environments. Yet, the works contrast ever so slightly, revealing subtle differences upon closer analysis.
Time comes to a quiet pause in these works, only offering a mere suggestion of movement: fallen leaves are suspended mid-air, a stray piece of paper skims the ground, and a budding sapling sits in the stillness of a frozen shadow. In adjoining counterparts, Pupityastaporn renders the same scenes in different perspectives, at times changing the placement of certain elements, or portraying the image from a different angle or time of day. An obscured quality of nostalgia pervades these paintings, evoking a sense of vague familiarity, somewhere between forgetting and remembering.
Subjecting her viewers to a visual process of retrieval and repatterning, Pupityastaporn debuts a body of work that mirrors the fluidity of memory. She reflects on the potential transformations of our recollections, both of the personal and shared. The works created for Frieze Seoul continue the artist’s ongoing observations of liminality and subjectivity, intertwining the emotional and environmental.
https://www.frieze.com/fairs/frieze-seoul
