Lust for Dust

"Life is not a bed of roses.
The ambitions it has,
One day, will become dust."

Sompong Panich, is an architect who has never retired and an artist who has never stopped making his own crafts. In 2022, he exhibited his craft and furniture works at two galleries in Bangkok: the ATTA Gallery's Principle in Love exhibition and the VS Gallery's Soul Craft exhibition. Painting was another art he practiced concurrently, which he learned to do at a young age before entering the competition, and he continued to draw architectural drawings career as an architect.

Sompong loves and regularly practices abstract painting with brushes in modern art traditions. This Lust for Dust exhibition at Xspace is the milestone at which Sompong Panich's craft works and paintings gathered. He applied all the creative processes of changing the surrounding building materials to combine with his crafts and his paintings.

This all started when his Italian painter friend, Giacomo Failla, visited Bangkok to create art. This was their opportunity to exchange artistic perspectives for several weeks. Sompong perceived the opportunities and new techniques he could independently develop. One day, Sompong Panich brought colored paper left over from the works of fellow artists to be used as a starting point for creating his work using techniques other than brush painting, such as splashing paint, painting with various materials, using stencils to recreate patterns, and prioritizing the release of empty space on the canvas without forcing himself through his brushstrokes. The Sompong’s final result differs from his traditional paintings.

Lust for Dust is the name of an exhibition in which the artist describes his experience of realizing the truth through art creation while simultaneously yearning for the intangible ideal of beauty. In the end, it was discovered that what people desired was a sense of freedom, letting go of the artist's old self, unlearning or relearn, and embracing new possibilities. Most of the paintings in this exhibition are recent works that are integrated with traditional works that have been created over the decades, allowing the viewers to compare the evolution in artist's perspective, thinking, and activities while enjoying new things.

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