|
Sculptor Manop Suwanpinta is one of the few Thai artists managing to sustain
himself through three-dimensional commissions. Although he has worked on
several venerable projects such as commemorative statues for the Thai Royal
family, it’s his personal oeuvre that ignites his creativity. These works
also reveal popular themes reverberating through the local artistic psyche.
A
direct continuation of his preceding one-man shows
Rest of The Struggling Soul
and
Most People Feel Like
Me,
both held domestically in 2000, his third solo
exposé
The Figure in Landscape
showcased
at Bangkok’s Silpakorn University in 2003, where he received his degree in
Fine Art.
In a quiet residential
neighbourhood on the outskirts of Bangkok is the unassuming home of the
sculptor. Entering the 40-something’s ground-floor studio is like
discovering the dusty storage room of a waxwork museum. Shelves of wrinkled
faces, with expressions both serene and macabre, stare out like a catacomb
filled with mummies. The room is like a who’s who of Thai dignitaries and
religious preachers both past and present. In a country where superstition
and religious belief are intertwined, Manop jokes that ghosts wander the
derelict house-cum-studio.
While the downstairs is
crammed with detailed dummies of his appropriated statues, his upstairs
studio dominates with a hunched crawling figure recurring in multiple
guises. When pressed on this mainstay of his art, Manop reveals, “I first
started making the bent-up creeping figure of myself around 15 years ago
during the time I was employed as a civil servant. It typifies the egotism
and avariciousness apparent in us all. This was the first time when I felt I
had a visual outlet for the feelings and frustrations crawling round inside
me.” As a member of the Fine Art Department’s committee responsible for
commissioning public art works, the prestigious placement would normally
instil pride in a dedicated artisan.
However, Manop became
disillusioned by what he claims were the underhanded tactics employed for
awarding outside sculptural contracts, favouring as they did, influential
veterans on the payroll. “I volunteered to help on an outside project to
build and landscape an important monument, which forged my reputation apart
from my official post. This enabled me to generate my own public commissions
by underbidding the Department.”
Unable to sell his
personal work, these statues and memorials are his sole means of support;
they include representational figures honouring members of the Monarchy, as
well as several influential Buddhist monks. They resonate with a sense of
realism comparable to the mid-twentieth century sculptures by the late
Paitun Muangsomboon. Much of what he has learned through his expressive work
permeates and benefits the more regimented public projects, imbuing them
with emotion and life.
Manop uses his personal
art, however, to display his disgust with man’s rapacity, hoping art will
extricate him from the earthly vices of greed and consumption. Whether the
resulting manifestations are understood or appreciated by viewers is
unimportant to his creative process. And he attributes their blatancy to his
own no-nonsense attitude.
While there is a
noticeable focus on the decimation of South America rainforests, humanity’s
destructive ignorance is also alarmingly visible within Thailand’s shrinking
national parks. This devastation is spurred on by a lack of regulations and
enforcement among neighbouring SE Asian nations. To Thailand’s credit, there
has been progress in outlawing domestic logging, but it’s the get-rich-quick
attitude of successive self-interested governments that keeps local
environmentalists constantly losing an uphill battle to preserve its natural
attractions. Born out of this struggle, a whole generation of Thai artists
are forecasting ecological gloom. Usually, they call for a return to
spiritual values as the only possible means of redemption.
In the traffic-clogged
capital where cars rule, Manop is, unsurprisingly, loathe to admit he drives
a car, deeming it necessary for survival. It’s these contrary ethics that
reinforce his perspectives on humanity. In an urban society where cars have
become a luxurious mark of status, the artist explains, “I use transport for
work only, not as a convenience. Limitation over excess, this is what man
needs to realise.” |
|
Wheels have also started
appearing on the bases of some of his latest figurative sculptures, as a
statement about the increasing speed of urban life. Thais are known for
their easy-going relaxed manner, but with increased urbanity, as well as the
availability of technology like the Internet, life is becoming hectic and
stressful.
Another trend in Thai art
is holding the West, especially America, culpable for the devils of
capitalism. While Manop more broadly blames flaws in the human species, he
also censures a self-profiting US for much of the world’s current
environmental and economic policymaking. Unfortunately, these issues have
been somewhat eclipsed by the American “War on Terrorism.” “Man
falsely believes that he can exploit the planet to serve his own means, when
actually he must change himself to conform with the earth’s dictates.
Only then is there any real chance for survival and a harmonious existence.”
The void in modern life
is a running motif in his art. It’s most literally symbolised in the two
sculptural pairings Greediness and Selfishness of Human and Rest
of the Struggling Soul, both exhibited in 2000. Man and woman are
tethered in their search for meaning, their chests gaping and skulls empty.
In the latter rendering, an Adam and Eve-like couple is personified by
life-size, white resin moulds of the artist and his wife. The hinged torsos
open to expose receding staircases, where a minute figure tries to escape.
This sense of incompleteness is less overt in his more recent sculptures.
Now Manop would like to incorporate them into public spaces, and construct
large-scale pieces, if he can muster the patronage. This may be a long time
coming, especially considering the after-effects of the 1997 economic
crisis. Compounding the problem is the tendency for public art to be both
recognisable and representational, or of a religious nature.
In two small, experimental, bronze mock-ups, Season & Time and
Destination & Finally, Manop remains constant thematically but his
delivery is more abstract – exploring textural variations within the
metallic medium. The circle of life is central but interrupted by an
elongated hollow shadow of a figure, which is another nod to emptiness. Much
of his art draws from Eastern and Buddhist philosophy, be it in the
conjoined figures or in the circular halves personifying the yin-yang
duality of life. But a triangle shows the hierarchical nature of society.
Still, the sculptor is quick to dismiss any suggestions of religious dogma.
“I’m not tying to preach about adhering to orthodox faiths; they are
actually responsible for many of the world’s disputes and
conflicts.”
In Season & Time, the potential monumental intent seems to
predominate through the dull, scorched, rusting surface, manipulated to feel
archaic and neglected. Manop obviously envisions how these models might
appear on a more grandiose scale within a public domain. The two bronze
pieces have a potent primeval simplicity to them that evokes ancient
archaeology like Stonehenge’s megaliths. This suggested discovery of
ransacked or extinct dominions protracts further in another bronze casting
Civilisation. Manop acknowledges influence from the powerful
sculptures of Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi.
In the Most People Feel Like Me exhibition, his trademark of
composite small figurines are strewn across the gallery floor as well as
being fixed onto wall-mounted boards. Interspersed among individual
three-dimensional entities, Manop fabricates a blend of traditional
sculptural displays with installations. In a more recent mutation, a smooth
white figure of the artist curls up in a foetal position as he cowers from
the world – his baldness highlighting his vulnerability. Conversely, his
deliberate withdrawal from the world around him could also represent man’s
ignorance and aversion to truth.
Although bronze is a
costly material, Manop believes it give his work a measure of posterity. “I
think about the notion of permanence and longevity, and the thought that
your creation might still exist in a thousand years is something I strive
for – just look at the devastation and wreckage from the World Trade
Center’s twin towers. At this rate my bronzes may even outlast humanity.”
|
