GAZING INTO COLOUR presents Arjinjonathan’s ambitious art practice through this recent body of work. The exhibition title itself is an invitation that invites the viewer to stare/look/gaze/glance at his vivid and bright, colorful works. His art practice is based on exploration and seeking new possibilities through the use of various materials.

Behind these bright, vibrant, vivid and playfully evocative painting, Arjinjonathan addresses the issue of art work interpretation and valuation; hence it is the result of his careful exploration and investigation in medium characteristic. In the beginning, he works with oil paint with a recent shift to acrylic paint was the result of his undergone the research into the characteristics of medium, process, and concept. He is trained as a painter, but has been working with wide ranges of media, preliminary research based, his work is often engaged in the critique of Thai political condition, and extending to community based projects. As well as continuing his serious direction in painting in recent years.

In his art practice, he distant himself from traditional Thai painting, for example the narrative, Buddhist related, perspective, colour theory, composition, or even using paint brush paint; moreover, his painting is not a mean to express himself nor relate to his personal life but it is a result of his investigating in medium attribute and is reflect to the contemporary society. Each work is made from acrylic paint and self-mixed paint; he meticulously and intuitively apply layers of vivid paint after paint by palette knife, texture and surface is created from the mixture of gypsum powder into the paint; While lustrous surface is from his binder medium is his finishing. Result in variable expanses of textured, bright, colorful, vivid work on canvas.

This use of ‘other’ mediums like gypsum powder, colour concentrated, binder medium, pigment is his means to address the issue of art work interpretation and valuation. These materials are available in construction supply shop or commercial printing supply shop. While using this material which originally developed to serve the industrial and commercial need; he has blurred the boundary of hierarchy in the art by employing them in his work and questioning the material authentication.

Theses vivid and bright colours of Arjinjonathan’s canvases refers to the contemporary modern society, urbanization and the advancement of technology today. He uses vivid tones to refer to the colour in everyday life. ”the colour we see in everyday life, it’s getting more and more colorful”, Arjinjonathan said. His references and use of this bright and visually overloaded colour refers to, but not limited to painted colour. This reaction to what we see in everyday life ranging from; the colours of peoples shirts to the colour of cars, huge printed banners on every corner of the road, large format LED screens that are installed in the city etc. These are part of mass urbanization and a result of advanced technology, and it is now become part of everyday life.

GAZING INTO COLOUR is an evidence of his exploration and investigation through medium and material, and provocative to the contemporary issues of the artwork’s interpretation and valuation. Arjinjonathan reflect’s upon the banal and mundane colour of urbanization and modern society in a visually unique way.