STATE OF THE RIDICULOUS
Tuksina Pipitkul and Wantanee Siripattananuntakul
February 26 – April 26 2015
Curated by Brian Curtin

H Gallery is very pleased to announce the pairing of Tuksina Pipitkul and Wantanee Siripattananuntakul, two dexterous artists who employ the vernacular of popular culture to playful and provocative effect. State of the Ridiculous explores the tropes of the ridiculous – silly, laughable, derisive – as a means of social commentary while also claiming the inevitable ridiculousness of much that purports to give profound meaning to our lives.
Mounted across the gallery’s main space and H Project Space, the exhibition is an integrated experience that carries visitors between the delightful and ominous. Themes include the fragility of social hierarchies, the flux of cultural symbols and the arbitrary attribution of value in personal and market exchange. State of the Ridiculous includes a major new installation by Wantanee that explores the often absurd appearances of societal inequality and disenfranchisement.
The politics of play and playfulness has long informed the serious work of alternative and critical cultures, from art to activism. This exhibition explores the depoliticizing sensibilities of local understandings of play and fun as a retreat into wilful ignorance and failure to face political realities. Oscillating between the carefree and the consequential, State of the Ridiculous subversively demands that we look again at how we can imagine and relate to difficult circumstances in the contemporary world.