Worasit Kileksi summons spirits from burnt wood and rusted metal at Alliance Française
Fire Spirits is the second solo exhibition from Chiang Mai-based sculptor Worasit Kileksi, whose practice draws on Buddhist and folk imagery to assemble figures from discarded and rather humble materials – wood, clay, metal and found objects – into primitive gods and mystical animals. In this new body of work the underlying humour of his earlier pieces remains but the atmosphere has shifted toward something more austere. Burnt wood, rusted metal and copper wire form effigies that feel as though they have emerged from a ravaged landscape, neither human nor machine. Alongside them, small terracotta portraits blackened by smoke evoke elderly men and women from northern Thai rural communities, their naïve and expressive faces sharing an uncanny family resemblance. Fire runs quietly through all of it as a thread connecting passage, impermanence and the slow recession of customs and memories with the generations that carried them. Curated by Myrtille Tibayrenc of Toot Yung Art Studio.
Now-October 4. Alliance Française Chiang Mai. Charoen Prathet Road.