LA Artcore presents a special exhibit that takes place in and honors the 4th anniversary of the passing of the organization's founder and director, Lydia Takeshita, who led the organization from 1979 until her passing in 2019.
The tandem solo exhibit by Kamol Tassananchalee and Josh Friedman was part of Takeshita's original exhibit schedule that sees fulfillment in its Little Tokyo gallery space.
"Kamol Tassananchalee has developed an oeuvre employing the Four Primary Elements of Nature, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, the constituent elements of creation, across mixed media paintings and sculptures
The ink roller, another recurrent motif in Kamol's work, symbolizes in the current context, cyclical time, with the recurrent manifestations of the world, evolving through the interactions of its fundamental elements.
After five decades as an artist and hundreds of national and international exhibitions, Thai National Artist Tassananchalee Is truly a Thai “ambassador of art" and an "Artist of Two Worlds.”
As well as incorporating traditional Thai motifs and Western techniques, Tassananchalee often employs such diverse and unorthodox materials as sand, pieces of wood, eating utensils, bug wings, porcupine quills, string, and whatever comes to hand, creating textures, harmony, and contrast in compositions reflecting his boundless energy and adventurous spirit. Much of his work has been inspired by his extensive travels into the vast panoramas of mountains, deserts, and canyon lands of the American Southwest, with its grand vistas, vivid colors, fantastic primordial geologic formations, spacious skies, and phantasmagorical sunsets. Dreams also play an important role in providing inspiration for Kamol's artwork. "While I am sleeping, I always dream of my creation, and then I work on the new concept in the dream after I am awake."
Kamol's work exhibits many traditional Thai cultural elements, but it is thoroughly grounded in Western traditions and concepts of fine art. Until the early 1930's Thai art was primarily involved with temple illumination. Mural paintings based upon the life of the Buddha and Buddha images, usually of lacquered wood or cast bronze. In the 1920's a young Italian sculpture, Corrado Feroci, was brought to Thailand, at the request of King Rama VI, to produce many of the monumental sculptures seen throughout Bangkok. Within a few years, Feroci was teaching Thai students. Instrumental in establishing Silpakorn (Fine Art) University in 1943, he is credited with introducing contemporary Western art to Thailand. Since then, Thai artists have been fully engaged with international concepts and developments of contemporary art.
The Art of Kamol Tassananchalee reflects his singular character and the diverse influences that affect his life in the two worlds of East and West. Kamol's paintings and mixed media works, resplendent with color, are imbued with the spirit of his Thai cultural heritage, particularly as a Thai Buddhist, combined with life experiences from studying, living, and working as an artist in the States and extensive travels throughout the USA, Europe, and Asia. His sculptures and two-dimensional works employ an amalgam of symbols and techniques acquired from the cultures of the East and West, creating iconographic images of universal appeal. Recurrent motifs in his work are tools of his trade, paint brushes, paint tubes, ink rollers, and pallet knives. Thai cultural motifs include Thai shadow puppets (Nang Yai) and Thai kites (Chula-Pakpool. references to Buddhism (Buddha's footprint) and cosmology (the four elements).
Kamol has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, and lectured at a number of other colleges and universities in the U.S. As a guest artist, he has taught, lectured, and organized workshops and symposiums at Colleges and Universities throughout Thailand. Kamol is the Founder of the Thai Art Center in Los Angeles, which he established in 1978, and the Thai Art Council USA/Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, California, founded in 1982. Both organizations continue to serve as vehicles for Kamol to introduce Thai Art and Thai artists to the US, its art museums, art galleries, and the vast scenic landscapes of the American Southwest. In more recent years, Kamol organized a number of workshops and exhibitions in Thailand with Thai and international artists, promoting multicultural relationships between artist-participant. These programs also included tours to select venues of cultural interest, introducing foreign guests to Thai art and culture.
Tassananchalee was born in 1944 in Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand. He began drawing and painting in early childhood with his grandfather, an artist in the court of King Rama V (King Chulalongkorn). Tassananchalee studied at Poh-Chang Art College and Srinakharinwirot University, Bangkok. He then traveled to Southern California, USA, in the mid-seventies, where he received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Printmaking from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. He quickly established himself as an artist in the vibrant west coast art scene. Since that time, nearly fifty years, Kamol has spent much of his time traveling between his adopted home in LA and his homeland, where he maintains a studio in Bangkok." [Excerpt by Richard David Garst]
This exhibit will be joined with works on paper by Josh Friedman, a Los Angeles-based artist and part of the Thailand Exchange Program cohort. Friedman's works investigate nature and landscape and are influenced by his extensive and numerous travels throughout Thailand. Friedman is currently in the process of relocating his studio to Asia.
Friedman's works on paper incorporate local tools and materials to shape a particular piece and engage with the region's diverse calligraphic and landscape traditions. A majority of Friedman's drawings have been made with China ink on handmade Thai bamboo paper sourced in northern Thailand and created during a recent two-month journey through Thailand and Cambodia.
This exhibition includes a selection of sketchbook drawings that form the basis for development into sculptures. Surface, light, and movement are central to the artist's involvement and are embodied by strategies of multiples and repetition. Accumulations of marks and lines navigate liminal states between a form, an identity, or a hallmark. The use of multiples and repetition are formal devices that intentionally negate chronological or literal readings.
After visiting and researching dozens of temples throughout Thailand and Siem Reap, Cambodia, and having worked for three years for the Japanese Ministry of Education and Shogakukan Publishing Company, Friedman has since incorporated the prolific use of stenciling in both Thai and Japanese architecture and textiles.
Josh Friedman holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. His works on paper and sculptures have been exhibited in gallery and museum exhibitions in China, Italy, Korea, Japan, the United States, and Thailand. His work has also been written about in Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Friedman maintains his creative practice in Long Beach, California.