Credit images Raphael Wanner
Images courtesy of Mikro and the artist
Bulbous lumps once corralled together now show uncanny symptoms. Not from the onset of singularity, but from an inability to distinguish themselves as machine-milled or homespun. A crisis of craft. While some moved at speed to discern in themselves store bought from homemade, others leveraged the ambiguity. Some would proceed to check-out entirely; others would hyphenate their children.
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Sorawit Songsataya has been on residency in Stockholm where the city’s blooming violas have made their way into his recent works – a pair of wool, wire and flower-petal sculptures, Cancer I & Cancer II. In step-sister, these ‘sick cancerous chairs’ hold court with a stretch of mute portraits (F amily portrait, 2018), two petrified vase s (Puppeteer, 2018) and a couple of short films Afternoon Pick (2015) and Bronies (2016). Adding to the lexicon of motifs his work contains, and the social and biological concerns he often examin es, step-sister is a warped ecology of organic and plastic, human and non-human intimacies.
step-sister is the first exhibition of Sorawit’s work in Switzerland. His recent solo exhibitions include Starling, at Artspace, Auckland, 2018, and Cabi nets of Curiosities, Papakura Art Gallery, Auckland, 2017. His work has been featured in the group exhibiti ons Art and Shops, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, 2018; Soon Enough: Art in Action, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, 2018; Acting Out, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, 2017; Dark Objects, The Dowse Art Museum, Wellington, 2017; Potentially Yours: The Coming Community, Artspace, Auckland, 2016; The Non-living Agent, Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Auckland, 2016.
Curated by Mohamed Almusibli & Matthew Hanson for Mikro, Zürich