What happens when an image of a person becomes something more than a likeness? Muse: Beyond Human approaches this question through works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, presented alongside contemporary artists whose practices engage with the histories, images and ideas that shape art today. Open for four days only, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter works by two pivotal figures in modern art in person in Bangkok.
Picasso's Nu couché et musicien (1967) depicts a reclining nude woman alongside a musician in Baroque-inspired attire. Drawing on European art history through Picasso's distinctive Cubist sensibility, its shifting perspectives, freely arranged forms and assertive brushwork turn familiar conventions into a world shaped by the artist's own visual language. Matisse's Femme en costume oriental (1920) depicts a figure in a striped gandoura robe. Informed by his travels in Spain and North Africa and his admiration for Eugène Delacroix, it transforms the sitter through fluid lines and expressive colour, rather than simply recording her appearance.
The conversation continues through works by contemporary artists Natee Utarit, Kosit Juntaratip, Peihang Benoit, Joyce Pensato, Dana Schutz and Ixima Kuniyosi, who draw on historical imagery, reinterpret everyday scenes and use form and composition to challenge how we see. Natee Utarit's work, for example, references the paintings of Titian, whose own language was shaped in part by Hellenistic Greek sculpture, revealing how artistic ideas are carried forward across centuries.
An Expert Discussion on 30 October brings together Cristian Albu, Deputy Chairman and Head of 20th and 21st Century Art, Christie's Asia Pacific; Dr. Miwako Tezuka, Director of Dib Bangkok; and Ariana Chaivaranon, Curator at Dib Bangkok.
Admission: Free
information provided by event organizer
