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Rome, February 29 - March 15, 2024. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary is presenting PER/FORMATIVE CITIES | A Nest of Triptychal Performances by Saun Santipreecha. 

Traversing sound, video, surface, and object, the interdisciplinary, multimedia installation is Santipreecha’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first internationally coordinated (and executed) work.

The off-site presentation is curated by Camilla Boemio, and will take place at AOC F58 Galleria Bruno Lisi, Rome. The regular open hours at Galleria Bruno Lisi are Monday through Friday, 5pm until 7:30pm.

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On the Installation’s In/visible Architecture:

A dissimulated (or unhidden) view of the Max (MSP) visual programming language reveals the structures of the shifting architecture of Saun Santipreecha’s multimedia, multisensory installation PER/FORMATIVE CITIES (currently on view in Rome at AOC F58 Galleria Bruno Lisi). (An analogy: there’s a map that can be read, and even followed along step-by-step, but where I end-up will always change by the time I begin….) 

The tripled installation combines (1) three copper sculptures equipped with “exciters” (devices that allow the sculptures themselves to transmit sound); (2) a filmic projection that shows, responds-to, and interpolates (and interpellates) a visitor’s movements through the space; and, (3) a surveillant gaze from above (mounted on the ceiling) that feeds any movement through the gallery into the sound and projection—an eye-geological apparatus that records a body’s carceral state. This three-part or “triptychal” structure echoes the various triples that are nested within the work, and are a particular reference to the three texts and the three cities built-into the installation. (The texts: Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler/Invisible Cities/Mr. Palomar. The Cities: Bangkok/Los Angeles/Rome.)

With an adaptive responsiveness to the visitors’ bodies in the gallery and a modular programming architecture engineering the work’s metamorphoses over time (and throughout the space), there is an unusual kind of performance created between the various levels of others’ often “accidental” participation in the work and the relational structure on which the installation is built. Evolving this aspect of his work through a borrowed notion from the Theater of the Oppressed (see Augusto Boal), Santipreecha refers to the gallery visitors—or really anyone involved in acts of creation, installation, or interaction along his (notably collaborative) work—as “spect-actor” (rather than a passive ‘spectator’). It is along this relational and active position that Santipreecha begins to find his ethical concept of “relational modularity,” which situates a body as a temporary place and relative process undergoing constant change. Temporary, relative, changeable, and translational, but still sustaining the possibility of return by remaining in-between states.

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“We all turn in our hands an old, empty tire through which we try to reach some final meaning, which words cannot achieve.”
— (Mr. Palomar)

The Reader scans the room and encounters an object—A—in itself a subject in the system of objects, visual and aural, that encompasses the Reader. This subject voices the disembodied sounds displaced through distortions and refractions, embodying a system of cities and myth, walking, playing, transforming perception into the perceived via abstractions.…

This exhibition engages with three novels by Italo Calvino—If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler, Invisible Cities, and Mr. Palomar—as well as the three cities which have paved my own journey to this exhibition: Bangkok, Los Angeles, Rome. The installation interweaves the visual and the aural, the ephemeral and the physical, employing a triptychal, scalable configuration, folding and unfolding each layer, from the cities’ sonic imprints, to the performative, relationally-modular video installation to the three copper sound sculptures. The sounds themselves are created from the performative gestures of social contributors from all three cities, as well as flautist Cari Ann Souter and myself. These are further modulated by the subjective system of the public spect-actor’s movements in the gallery—resisting, yet subsumed within, the fixed system of the video projection’s embedding of mythos. Like the formative and performative actions that make a city, always an entwining of three elements—nature/environs, human/systemic action, and myth/ideology—within time, the work weaves the macro into the micro level. Bordering on either side of abstraction which twist and entwine within each other, from the subjective to the objective back to the subjective and outwards again, these actions do not end with me as the artist but both come from beyond and continue further, from and through systems that form not only the morphology of who we are but that of the cities we live in: embodiments of the disembodied, “spider- webs of intricate relationships seeking a form.” (Invisible Cities)

[Text by Saun Santipreecha, Translated by Francesca Virginia Coppola.]

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CITTÀ PER/FORMATIVE | Una ragnatela di performance tripticali

Saun Santipreecha

A cura di Camilla Boemio

Mostra presentata da Reisig and Taylor Contemporary [con objet A.D]

“Tutti rigiriamo tra le mani un vecchio copertone vuoto mediante il quale vorremmo raggiungere il senso ultimo a cui le parole non giungono.” — (Palomar)

Il Lettore esamina la stanza ed incontra un oggetto—A— esso stesso un soggetto nel sistema degli oggetti, visivi e sonori, che circonda il Lettore. Questo soggetto dà voce ai suoni senza corpo dislocati attraverso distorsioni e rifrazioni, incarnando un sistema di città e mito, camminando, giocando, trasformando la percezione nel percepito tramite astrazioni…

Questa mostra si confronta con tre romanzi di Italo Calvino—Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore, Le città invisibili e Palomar—e con le tre città che hanno segnato il mio personale percorso verso questa mostra: Bangkok, Los Angeles, Roma. L’installazione intreccia il visivo ed il sonoro, l'effimero ed il fisico, utilizzando una configurazione tripticale e scalabile, piegando e dispiegando ogni strato, dalle impronte sonore delle città, alla video-installazione performativa e relazionalmente-modulare , alle tre sculture sonore in rame. I suoni stessi sono creati dai gesti performativi dei contributori sociali provenienti da tutte e tre le città, dalla flautista Cari Ann Souter e da me stesso, ulteriormente modulati dal sistema soggettivo dei movimenti dello spett-attore pubblico nella galleria - resistendo al sistema fisso della videoproiezione che incorpora il mito, eppure fagocitati al suo interno. Come le azioni formative e performative che creano una città, sempre un intreccio di tre elementi—natura/ambienti, azione umana/ sistemica e mito/ideologia—nel tempo, il lavoro intreccia il livello macro con il micro. Confinando con entrambi i lati dell'astrazione che si aggrovigliano e si intrecciano l'uno nell'altro, dal soggettivo all'oggettivo e di nuovo al soggettivo e verso l’esterno ancora, queste azioni non terminano con me come artista, ma provengono da oltre me stesso e continuano ulteriormente, da e attraverso sistemi che formano non solo la morfologia di chi siamo, ma quella delle città in cui viviamo: incarnazioni del disincarnato, "ragnatele di rapporti intricati che cercano una forma." (Le città invisibili)

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“My work is grounded in the position of questioning—or rather the questioning of position—in relation to frames and systems while acknowledging the inevitable necessity for frame and form to carry intent and meaning, to enable dialogue—ouroboros; the act of breaking myth being itself a form of myth-making.

My work as a whole is the form and process through and within which many of my inquires take, the oscillation between ideas and emotions, the investigation of our need to find meaning which leads to the theme of mythology and myth-making, itself another kind of frame and form which shapes and molds our perceptions of the world.”

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Saun Santipreecha is an interdisciplinary artist from Thailand who works in both visual and aural mediums. His artistic route in both disciplines began simultaneously, studying privately with two Thai Silpathorn Award recipients for Thai contemporary artists, visual artist Chalermchai Kositpipat and classical pianist/composer Nat Yontararak amongst other tutors and mentors. In 2008 he moved to Los Angeles where he pursued a career in music composition for film, collaborating with artists from multiple disciplines including fashion and video games while also working independently on projects culminating in the experimental album Dandelye (2022). His compositional work in film, TV, and fashion has been screened in over thirty film festivals worldwide including the Cannes Film Festival as well as at New York, Paris and LA Fashion Weeks. He has also worked in numerous capacities in the music department for a number of composers including John Debney, Danny Elfman, The Newton Brothers and Abel Korzeniowski.

He had his debut solo exhibition as an artist in July, 2023 with his exhibition Dandelye—or, Beneath this River’s Tempo’d Time We Walk at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary in Los Angeles, CA. His first international solo exhibition, Per/formative Cities | A Nest of Triptychal Performances, engages with three novels by Italo Calvino through a multimedia sound installation (February 29 – March 15 in Rome, Italy). His second solo exhibition in Los Angeles at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary is titled ...These Things That Divide The World In Two... and coincides with his participation as a panel speaker at the 9th Annual Conference of the Samuel Beckett Society—Beckett and Justice—at California State University, Los Angeles (the exhibition is on view May 25 – June 22, 2024).

His work has been in various group exhibitions in Incheon National University, South Korea, New York, and Los Angeles, and he continues to work with artists and specialists across disciplines.

He is currently based in Los Angeles, CA.

{Biographical text courtesy of the artist.}

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Contributing performers: Francesca Virginia Coppola, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, objet A.D, Camilla Boemio, Kittiya Nivasanont.

Alto Flute solos by Cari Ann Souter.

Luc Trahand: Co-producer and Max Architectural Engineer

Francesca Virginia Coppola: Associate Producer and Exhibition Text Translator.

On-location footage shot in Los Angeles by Jean Hsi, Saun Santipreecha, Savika Goerres.

Technical consultants: Chen Shen, Manop Buranapramest, Ken Goerres Sculpture

Base Design and Fabrication: Ken Goerres.

Installation Photography by Gabriele Mizzoni.