Sakarin Krue-On (January 7, 1965) is a contemporary Thai visual artist. His works are often site-specific installations with traditional Thai cultural influences. Krue-On is an art instructor, an advisor for postgraduate students, and the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts at Silpakorn University. Krue-On resides and works in the metropolitan area of Bangkok, although his projects and exhibitions frequently take him out of Thailand.
Early life and education Krue-On was born in Mae Hong Son, a northwestern Thai province. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Silpakorn University in 1989, under the supervision of Chalood Nimsamer.
Career Krue-On has created a number of solo works, in addition to collaborating with other artists and presenting exhibitions at galleries and institutions. He specializes in site-specific installations, and sometimes works with local communities to produce his works. His pieces are often sculptural, but he also uses video and paintings. His work highlights the virtues of traditional Thai culture, such as rice farming practices, temple paintings, and Buddhist imagery, while blending Western and local techniques of printmaking, drawing, sculpting, and painting.
In 2009, Krue-On was the recipient of the Silpathorn Award for the category of visual arts, presented by the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture. In 2016 he won Prudential Eye Lifetime Achievement Award which made in recognition of an artist with an international track record for his or her contributions to the field of Asian contemporary art over the course of a lifetime. In addition to the award, Niru Ratnam, Director of Prudential Eye Programme citing his work as "Whilst other successful Asian artists have sited their practice within a global language of contemporary practice, Krue-On continues to work through nuances specific to Asian cultural identity. For this, and for his international success, he is the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the third Prudential Eye Awards."
Selected projects
Temple, 2000
"Temple" was the first solo work by Krue-On, exhibited in a café and gallery, About Art Related Activities (AARA) in Bangkok. In this work, he transformed three different rooms of the gallery area into spaces for meditation, drawing influences from traditional Thai mural painting. The stencils took the forms of traditional Thai (not Buddhist) deities. The designs on the walls were created to fade over time, slowly becoming invisible. The work coincided with an economic crisis in Thailand. The artist created a similar installation, "Nang Fa (Angel)" in 2007 for the Neue Gallerie in Kassel, Germany. The work also contemporarily showed in other famous art galleries, such as in exhibition "Murals" at Fundacio Joan Miró in Barcelona, Spain in 2010 and at Pearl Lam Gallery in Shanghai, China in 2016.
Cloud Nine (Lom lom Lang lang), 2005
"Cloud Nine (Lom lom Lang lang)" was installed in the 100 Tonson gallery in Bangkok. The Thai part of the name means "empty hope." The project was a two-room installation; one room featured many white porcelain figurines of street dogs with feathery red angelic wings, devouring a banquet. The second room displayed video footage of real puppies in feeding from their mother. The work was installed again in 2012 as part of exhibition " Panorama: Recent Art from Contemporary Asia" at Singapore Art Museum, Singapore. In 2013 the work was brought to Hong Kong Art Basel by 100Tonson gallery and was well received as one of the selected high-light.
Documenta 12, 2007 Terraced Rice Field Art Project
"Terraced Rice Field" was created for Documenta 12 outside of the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe museum building. With the help of local volunteers, Krue-On created a functioning terraced rice field on the side of the nearby hill. According to the 'Europe Grand Tour of Contemporary Art' an article by Julia Chaplin in on May 28, 2007, New York Times the 'Terraced Rice Field Art Project' was written about as following
"...The show - 120 artists from the Congo to Australia - takes an outsider's view of the commercial art world. To keep an element of surprise, Documenta does not reveal the list of artists until the final hour. Among the known participants is Sakarin Krue-On from Thailand, who is creating a Southeast Asian terraced rice field on a hillside outside an 18th-century palace as a large-scale earth-art culture clash..."
2007 was a time when rice planting was not a popular subject and popular activity to be shown in various occasion as in nowaday. Sakarin came up with the idea of applying the terrace for rice plantation on the hillside at Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel at the first time he went to the city to survey the sites.
In a concept background he cited in his original proposal of the project, Sakarin stated that
".....The site-specific installation Terraced Rice Fields Art Project seeks to create rice fields on the slope leading up to the prestigious Wilhelmshöhe Museum in Kassel. It is an effort to create something in an entirely different and unlikely context, and to fuse two completely opposing sets of cultural beliefs concerning both anthropology and sociology. On one hand, the architecturally brilliant and powerful Wilhelmshöhe, guardian of historical artefacts; and on the other, Terraced Rice Field, a testimony to manís conquest over his environment and a symbol of growth and co-operation. Although they differ in form, both structures have similar humanitarian attributes; their aim is to protect and nurture mankind.
This will be done through agriculture activity, a tradition born from primitive time, a tool to test the co-operation of people. This project will enlist help of the people of Kassel, both locals and foreigners. It is hoped that by working together to create these fields, the idea of ‘self’ and the division of labour in modern society will be put to question. The study of this simple yet effective farming method will also prove that the contemporary social system we live in is not the only way. A system such as farming may look so primitive and disconnected from daily life in Europe that it seems like a romantic notion, but in fact farming still continue to be a source of sustenance in countries all over the world.
Terraced Rice Fields stresses the importance of the process, and not the end product. I hope that the creative effort of Terraced Rice Fields Art Project will show one possible solution to the problem of sustenance, and reveal the simplicity of co dependence on other human beings, of life as it lived in our early societies.
Reflecting on generosity and making an effort to be generous, to meet halfway, to be honest and harmonious, is a starting point to proving that a society based on co-operation and support will not be easily abolished. This simpler way of living may then turn out to be what everyone truly desires."
Ripe Project : Village and Harvest Time (สวรรค์บ้านนา ถึงเวลาเก็บเกี่ยว), 2008
The project was a follow up of the Terrace Rice field Art project under the collaboration between the artist and Tang Contemporary Art and ARDEL Gallery of Modern Art and was present through the methods of site- specific installation and multidisciplinary. The project was given an explanation and citing in details accordingly by the curator Josef Ng as in the excerpt below
"... Yet, rather than to call attention to agricultural spectacle around a localized form of community practice, this project was about empowerment. Informed by co-dependency, informed by an ideal notion of a dialogic space, a temporary field Krue-on wants to establish where people from geographically, culturally and socially disparate spaces come together to express their differences and ideas while allowing communitarian pluralism.
Depending not so much on what is actually produced in tangible form vis a vis, the framework that Krue-on has established, certainly creates an entryway where an alternative living methodologies can be considered in addition to engaging the politics and practice of contemporary consumer culture.
The process continued with this latest solo exhibition, simultaneously held in 2 venues at the same time and later, in another site as part of a group exhibition. Again, interested in bringing forth how daily activities of life and artistic process work within each other, creating a social dynamics of community-building, Ripe Project: village and harvest time represents a disparate of conceptual pursuits. Categorized as, what the artist termed, "3 sub-elements", namely, Production, Re-production and Propaganda, each sub-element is presented in a different site, yet, they are connectedly marked by a concern over the everyday and the experiential; an imperative for the artist in this project.
In Ardel Gallery of Modern Art lies the essence of "Production", where grown rice brought back from Krue-on's Terraced Rice Field Art Project in Germany, will be re-planted together with new rice seedlings here in Thailand. This will be accompanied by a diaristic chronological timeline, in the form of drawings and diagrams, photography, video and narrated text, of the artist's seeds of cultivation in the project, from site visit to planning to execution in Documenta and finally, right up till now.
In Tang Contemporary Art, for the sub-element of "Re-production", an installation of ‘miniature’ paintings will be exhibited. Inspired by Thai ancient mural paintings, Krue-on has paid particular attention to the communal activities found in selected murals and ‘re-produce’ them in a series of 12 tempera-based works. Instead of focusing on the big narratives in religious spirituality usually preached in the large compositions of Thai mural paintings, as most are derived from the scriptures of Buddhism, the artist pays more attention to the daily activities of communal living, denouncing the preconception that the idea of the unity between community, labour and sharing represented an anachronistic and dying culture. Instead, he sees this unity as a vibrant, resurgent force to counteract with today's ever-increasing ideology-capitalism.
By having the paintings produced in a size no more than 12 by 15 cm, and having them hanged in the spacious gallery under dimmed light condition, with the only spotlight on these works, Krue-on attempts to tease out the audience to move closely to these souvenir-looking pieces to gaze closely at the contents in these artworks. Under such setting, the audience would be able to focus and to re-construct narratives and possibilities, and re-imagine communities.
The two venues will also be linked by a web-streaming live broadcast so that one can actually view the contents of what's in the respective galleries in real time when visiting either one of them. The last sub-element, "Propaganda", will be the combination of the contents in two venues, and presented in a virtual format in another exhibition, held at the Chulalongkorn University Art Center.
What I enjoy in Krue-on's projects is, not only his shrewd playfulness, yet with sensitivity, but his site-specific variations expose the sanctuaries of culture, whether in relation to personal, society or to art. Krue-on certainly works within the mind of true contemporary artists but, in a manner he only knows how, utilizes spaces and times that are simultaneously local and global to enact a unique contemporaneity."
Venice Biennale, 2009
Krue-On was one of five artists from Bangkok who worked together to represent Thailand at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and again in 2009. In They changed a pavilion into a satirical version of a tourism office, which appeared to be trying to convince the public to visit Thailand as tourists. The office displayed fictitious news broadcasts, large brightly-colored posters, travel brochures, and interactive video displays.
Manorah and Best Friends of the Snake, 2010