Ohhh... untitled 2020 (remember in november)

Work Statement

I usually describe my text works as road signs. Like when you drive on a highways and you drive by a big signage and pick up whatever the words are written on it. It's about whether that gets into your consciousness or not.

When you drive up to Pai from Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand you drive through the forest and all of a sudden you'll find a little piece of wood nailed to a tree with a text written on it, usually in Thai. Most of the time it's some message from Christian missionaries. I always find it interesting how suddenly shows up in the middle of nowhere, totally out of context. You read it because it stands out, and it does have some effect, wether you agree with it or not. I'm interested in this floating attention – in combination with the phenomenon of so many people running around wearing t-shirts not realizing what it says on them, at least in Japan or in Thailand. I find that kind of parallel to each other.

–Rirkrit Tiravanija
 

Artist Biography

Rirkrit Tiravanija (1961, Buenos Aires) received his BA from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1984 and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1986. From 1985-1986, he participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. He has received numerous grants and awards, including the Absolut Art Award 2010, the Silpathorn Award by the Ministry of Culture in Thailand (2017), Hugo Boss Prize (2004), and Lucelia Artist Award by the Smithsonian American Art
Museum (2003), among others.

Some of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s recent individual exhibitions.include: Rirkrit Tiravanija. Tomorrow Is the Question, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy; Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada (2019); untitled 2018 (the infinite dimensions of smallness), Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission series, National Gallery Singapore (2018); The fire is gone but we have the light: Rirkrit Tiravanija & Korakrit Arunanondchai, Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, United States (2016); Tomorrow is the Question, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, (2016); U.F.O. (Universal Fantastic Occupation), Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2015); untitled 2015 (tomorrow is on our tongue, as today pass from our lips), Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil (CCBB) Distrito Federal, Brasilia (2015); Rirkrit Tiravanija: Tomorrow is the Question, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2015); FOCUS: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, United States (2014); Without Reality There Is No Utopia, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), San Francisco, United States (2013); Portraits, Tate Modern, London (2013); On air, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2012); Print/Out, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); Rirkrit Tiravanija: Chew the Fat, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, United States (2009); Rirkrit Tiravanija: Demonstration Drawings, Drawing Center, New York (2008), among others.

Tiravanija lives and works in New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai.

Rirkrit Tiravanija is represented by Gladstone Gallery, New York and kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York.