Artist Steven Simon has been to Bangkok before. During a nine-week, Bangkok-based residency that he took part in a year ago, Simon worked with mosquito nets to create Void, shown at the Bangkok University Rangsit Campus Gallery, an immersive installation that played with ideas of vision and color.
This time around, Simon has an absolutely stunning solo show at upscale restaurant Eat Me. The show includes new sculptures, as well as documentation of Simon’s past works. Amongst the displays are large light boxes filled with images rich in color and ideas, rows of delicate sculptures, and even some pieces that hang high above viewers’ heads on the ceiling.
The images in the light boxes portray a large coral reef that Simon constructed from pasta, an unconventional material if we’ve ever seen one. He turned mounds of elbow and bow tie macaroni into an underwater garden by hand-painting each piece with a rainbow of saturated tones, then assembling the individual pieces (along with some scrunchies and a few other odds and ends) into a remarkably effective sculpture. There are dark purples, bright blues and neon oranges and yellows, all pulsating within the reef.
The effort involved in creating such a sculpture is close to what must have gone into the painting of the Sistine Chapel and is most certainly on par with the painstaking attention needed to create a marble frieze. Though the reef was not present in Eat Me, the light boxes offered a glimpse into Simon’s edible, underwater garden.
Aquatic boxes are not new to Simon; early in his career, he filled the back seat of a 1961 Cadillac with a fish tank, complete with several finned creatures and even a couple of plants. He christened the piece, “Brace for the Impact.”
As Simon puts it, “life is only as strong as its weakest link.”
The coral reefs hew to this ethos by offering bold political statements that utilize the natural world in conjunction with the artificial. But this is work from a Simon many years older and many years wiser. The playfulness is still there but it seems that his tendency for fierce confrontation is now entwined with awe for the mystery of life.
Eat Me Restaurant
Curated by Pan Pan Narkprasert
On Display through February 5th 2013.
Open Daily 3pm – 1am
02-238-0931
