Stress Test, a solo exhibition by Bangkok-based artist Wantaya Thitipaisal, on view from 1st August - 4th October 2026.
For Wantaya, a line becomes a shape, and a shape becomes a problem. Rather than resolve it, he adds pressure, building the work until it becomes a more obvious problem than when it started. This is the concept behind Stress Test - a body of work where competing forces are held together long enough to see what survives.
These paintings compress things the artist keeps running into: advertising, comics, religious ritual, family memory, the conditions of daily life in Bangkok. Separate subjects that arrived together and are painted that way. Figures collapse into objects, bodies into architecture, the recognisable into something harder to place.
Across the exhibition, abstraction and figuration are in open contest. In some works figuration holds its ground, a hand or a face pushing through clearly enough to anchor the composition. In others abstraction takes over almost entirely, leaving only fragments; an ear, a limb, a gesture, as evidence that something recognisable was there to begin with. Neither side wins, and that unresolved tension is where the paintings generate their charge.
The palette carries much of this duality. In Stress Test Wantaya moves between soft, pastel hues and passages of deep, near-black tone, often within the same canvas. The darker passages tend to sit closest to the personal and the lighter pastel tones carry something more playful. The effect throughout is emotive and physical rather than illustrative. What each viewer takes from the work is entirely their own.
information provided by event organizer
