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Rirkrit Tiravanija, video still from Lung Neaw, 2010,
digital video colour/sound, 8 hours 19
minutes.
Photo: Cristian Manzutto,
2010
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Pilar Corrias is delighted to present an exhibition of new work
by
Rirkrit
Tiravanija.
Born in 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Rirkit Tiravanija is
widely
recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation.
His
practice defies media-based description combining traditional
object
making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms
of
public service and social
action.
On the occasion of his second one person show in London Tiravanija
has
created two major new works. Screened in the main space of the
gallery
Lung Neaw (2010) an eight hour, nineteen minute long video
portrait
charts a day in the life of an elderly Thai man known simply as
Uncle
Neaw. Filmed in real time on the outskirts of Chiang Mai this
continuous
slow motion footage recalls Andy Warhol's experimental filmmaking
of
the early
1960s.
Lung Neaw is contrasted in both subject and medium with the
second
piece on view in the lower gallery. Here an installation of seven
35mm
slide projectors documents a performance in which the gallery's
Director
Pilar Corrias stood at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park recounting a day
in
her life for the duration of a working day. Entitled Pilar 08/10/10 the
work
references Marcel Broodthaers subversive silent performance of 1972
at
the same site. The performative description of a quotidian day in
the
artworld scripted by the artist from Corrias's personal diary is at
odds
with a site famously associated with political demonstration and
the
vocalisation of extreme
beliefs.
The exhibition of these two new works strictly corresponds to
the
passage of an average working day. The work will only be view from
10
O'Clock in the morning until 6 O'clock in the evening. Tiravanija's
first
exhibition with Pilar Corrias Gallery forms his second
one-person
exhibition in London since his retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery
in
2005.
Tiravanija studied at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, the
Banff
Center School of Fine Arts, Canada, the School of the Art Institute
of
Chicago, and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York.
He
has exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide. Major
solo
retrospectives include Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997);
Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (1999); Astrup Fearnley Museum
of
Modern Art in Oslo (2002); Chiang Mai University Art Museum
(2004);
Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen (2004); Museé de la Ville de
Paris
(2005), and Kunsthalle Bielefeld
(2010).
Tiravanija's work has been recognised with numerous prestigious
awards
including the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum
in
Japan and the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist
Award,
the Hugo Boss Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in
New
York (2004) and the 2010 Absolut Art
Award.
Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts at
Columbia
University, and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station,
a
collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. Tiravanija is
also
President of an educational-ecological project known as The
Land
Foundation, located in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and is part of a
collective
alternative space called VER located in Bangkok where he maintains
his
primary residence and
studio.
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