Curated by Brian Curtin

H Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of paintings by Mit Jai Inn to launch our new space in Chiang Mai, which is the province’s first purpose-built gallery. H Gallery Chiang Mai promises to build on the established profile of H Gallery Bangkok, and H Project Space, with innovative and dynamic exhibitions that draw on the rich legacy of experimental art in the area and introduce new dialogues.

Mit Jai Inn is one of Thailand’s leading artists and is rapidly developing an international profile. He is included in the 18th Biennale of Sydney, 2012, curated by Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster.

UNTITLED introduces new paintings made especially for H Chiang Mai alongside the artist’s signature use of a soft geometric abstraction on double-sided canvases, sometimes coiled. Reminiscent of prayer flags or certain types of mandalas, the paintings’ expressive surfaces, often extravagant color, and sense of objecthood also suggest condensed references to canonical art history. This oscillation between the coded or symbolic and the autonomous is further pressured by a politics of form and color: Mit plays with references to the Thai national flag and divisive factions from the political landscape of this country, factions signified by particular colors.

The rhizomatic quality of Mit’s paintings challenges conventional methods of contextualization. Influences from dominant narratives of art history, the idiosyncrasies of notions of contemporary art and issues of the relationship between aesthetics and politics reverberate in UNTITLED. While challenges to conventional categories of understanding have been a staple of art practices for any number of decades, Mit re-invigorates the interest of ambiguity, divergence and multiplicity because of a freighted local backdrop that insists on the superiority of the unilateral, literal and linear.

H Gallery Chiang Mai is located 1/2 Km beyond the Tiger Kingdom in Mae Rim and is a short drive from The Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai and Dara Pirom Palace Museum. The gallery is open to the public by appointment only on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday each week. For an appointment contact H Gallery Chiang Mai on 085 021 5508.