Leisurely loitering in an air-conditioned gallery was frowned upon last week as the good people of Bangkok were made to exercise for their art. The week-long “Temporary Art Museum Soi Sabai” had them wandering all over town to see paintings, installations, photographs, animations, videos and films, not to mention hearing some live music.

Silpakorn University and the Rajata Art House seemed like appropriate destinations, but what about the Pla Dib restaurant on Soi Aree or (yikes!) the Ruen Nuad massage parlour in Soi Convent?

And if they still hadn’t broken a sweat on the city tour, art buffs were invited to fly to Chiang Mai for some high-flying discussions at a pair of art sites, the Land and Umong Silpadhamma.

“Walking through a museum is boring,” says Hideki Toyoshima, who with Fumiya Sawa and came up with the idea. “It’s kind of an adventure for people to get out and see artworks right across the city.”

The Japanese duo hosted Thai artists at their 2004 “Welcome to Soi Sabai” exhibition in Osaka. That month-long event was based around Graf Media GM, an artist-architect-designer collective that pushes the envelope.

The Japanese learned about Thai contemporary art, so this year it was the turn of the Thais to be hosts. Temporary Art Museum Soi Sabai saw the Osaka alumni reunited – Sutee Kunavichayanont, Suwan Laimanee, Porntaweesak Rimsakul, Angkrit Ajchariyasophon, Wit Pimkanchanapong, Wisut Ponnimit, Pod of the rock band Moderndog, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the Nuts Society collective.

Artists from Taiwan, Finland, Britain and Germany also joined in, but the big magnet was Yoshitomo Nara, well-known for his images of children with piercing gazes and mischievous grins.

At Silpakorn, Nara and Graf reconstructed – for the umpteenth time – Nara’s little wooden studio, complete with unfinished drawings scattered about, crayons and stationery sets and a shelf full of toys and dolls. His rough but snappy portraits of wide-eyed children and pensive canines were pinned to the walls.

The little shed, part of a long-term collaboration between Nara and Graf called “A to Z”, has since 2003 been rebuilt in various ways in museums and galleries all over the world.

Apparently, while still young, Nara grew weary of the pressures of fame and rented a humble shack from a farmer while continuing his studies in Nagoya.

“I was incredibly lazy at university,” says Nara, now 47. “Instead of going to the campus, I preferred to draw in peace at my own place and fixed my work to the wall.”

Four years later he moved his studies to Cologne, Germany, and immediately sought out the same solitary confinement.

“I yearned for the good old days, living in a small room that I’d painted to my own tastes and feeling relaxed. Now I always want to return to this familiar atmosphere and do as I please, and I hope my small room puts visitors at ease too.”

Ultimately, Nara and Graf plan to reassemble all 26 of the sheds they’ve shown around the world in a little “community” of their own in Nara’s hometown of Aomori.

Greeting visitors to the Silpakorn gallery was Nara’s gigantic, white, plastic “Phuket Dog”, originally created for the island’s “Art on the Beach” tsunami memorial.

To get the community involved, Nara asked 18 children from Rajata Art House to produce papier-mâché dog sculptures, while 18 Silpakorn architecture students made them wooden kennels.

“The children and the students weren’t allowed to meet each other until the opening day of the show on February 10 – surprises can be fun,” says Graf member Toyoshima. “We asked them to make dogs because they’re so easy to relate to, whether you study art or not.”

Nara’s pooch and the diverse strays sculpted by the youngsters yearned for a cuddle, but Taiwanese artist Peng Hung-Chih’s came up with canines for the show that went beyond cute.

In his humorous photos, costumed mutts were designated “One Dalmatian, One Lassie”, but they were certainly neither dashing Dalmatian nor capable collie. The irony was appreciated.

Elsewhere in the gallery, Porntaweesak appeared to have set aside his acclaimed reptilian walking teapots to play with a gas stove, but instead of flame, this cooker spouted water.

As defiant of reason as ever, he made one burner a tree-lined fountain with people strolling about, as if in a park, while the other burner held a plastic water pot in which guppies swam.

Meanwhile at Pla Dib, Britain-based Ambient TV Net presented a horrifying video of an Akha tribe member in northern Thailand killing a dog for food. Nearby was a pile of custom-labelled cans of (fake) dog meat.

The Nuts Society offered “Quality Second-hand Art Since 1998” – a sale of used clothing. Each item was screened with an inscription in Thai, among them “be respectful”, “don’t be selfish” and “more greed, more suffering”.

Sutee stacked wooden models of traditional Thai houses to skyscraper height in a denunciation of an educational system that bars thinking beyond accepted norms.

At the massage parlour, Sutee had an inkjet print entitled “Integrate Local Wisdom: Traditional Massage and Thai Boxing”, in which the muay thai combatant puts his feet against a foreigner’s face.

At Rajata, installations by Angkrit, Yoshinori Hosoki and the Nuts Society were accompanied by screening of short film “Ghost of Asia” by Apichatpong.

If you missed Temporary Art Museum Soi Sabai, the current issue of the art and design magazine Art4d features pieces by another participant, UK graphic artist Jonathan Barnbrook, who previously created the book designs for the reigning “bad boy” of British art, Damien Hirst.

Khetsirin Pholdhampalit

The Nation