Untitled Unfinished

Untitled Unfinished (2005)

Earlier this year we were 4 artists in search of a studio space, and I immediately thought of About Café. I have known this space since it first opened its doors and to me this space has always been a vital generating point that supported things to happen rather than simply show end results.

In its early days, artist Chitti Kasemkitvatana, who was the first curator of the space came up with the idea of ara: art related activities, laying much emphasis on process and exchange, and inviting people from various fields to come and interact in the space. He visited us at the studio in late October and our conversation led me to peel back the layers. The room I worked in upstairs is the same room where I was the first to install in 1998; I had then spent a long time drawing on the walls. As I peeled back the paint layers I came across faint traces of my original drawing that still remain on the wall. My intimacy with this room in particular comes from having a long association with the space - it is a well-trodden path. What I have here now is a kind of an archaeological site and my work is nowhere near done.

At one level this was to excavate, to get down to the essence of things, when much around us seems to ignore the fundamentals and simply acquire a layer of glossy finish. At another level the process of peeling/scraping and seeing the walls slowly loosing layers opens up the mind and allows other possibilities to enter.