WE Smile Magazine June 2016

Over the past five years, Thai-Japanese
contemporary artist Yuree Kensaku focused
much of her effort on creating increasingly
larger works of art. In her current site-specific
project, Atmosfear, presented at Bangkok’s 100
Tonson Gallery, Yuree offers visitors a unique
opportunity to watch as she transforms the
entire gallery into her own personal studio and
largest painting yet.
Yuree Kensaku had an exciting and
productive last decade, including numerous
highly reviewed domestic and international
solo exhibitions. Her works have become part
of permanent collections in many important
Asian art museums, such as Singapore Art
Museum, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan), and
Yokohama Museum of Art (Yokohama, Japan).
The artist uses her paintings to present
challenging life realities, yet does so with boundless
optimism and hope. Her fun and engaging
characters are born from mythology, popular
culture, Japanese Manga, folklore, and fairy
tales. Vivid colours come together into dramatic,
dreamlike scenes with strong visual narratives.
In her ongoing exhibition at 100 Tonson
Gallery, Yuree is turning the art space into
a giant colouring book, creating a fairy tale
atmosphere that draws viewers from an outside
world jammed with tension, complication, and
uncertainty. Combining the words “atmosphere”
and “fear”, the exhibition titled Atmosfear
intends to capture an environment of
fearfulness, both on personal and societal levels.
Yuree also plays with the Thai word, “ngeuak”,
derived from “nang ngeuak” for mermaid and
“nok ngeuak” for the hornbill bird.
Yuree explains, “These days, many
young Thais use the word ‘ngeuak’ to express
boredom, frustration, and pressure. On one
wall, I’m painting mermaids in a world trashed
by humans. On another wall, I’m weaving in recent
disasters such as Japan’s 2011 tsunami, the
Germanwings plane intentionally downed by its
co-pilot, and the region’s Rohingya boat crisis.”
Yuree’s lively paintings convey her strong
message through bright, cheerful dreamscapes
that elicit smiles from her audiences. While
walking through the exhibition, it’s easy for
Yuree’s playful worlds to mask the work’s central
themes of depression, tension, and fear – much
as they remain contained and unseen within
many of our lives.
Yuree further shares that, “Atmosfear is
a painting installation through which I want to
create a unique environment and experience
for each viewer. I want each person to feel like
they are walking into my paintings, becoming
a part of the scenes I create. I seek to share my
personal life stories and fears amid our global
backdrop of sad news stories, absurd politics,
and unforeseen disasters.”
Having almost died as a result of food
allergies, Yuree also expresses her intense
fears associated with allergies to common
foods such as peanuts, green peas, and
shellfish like shrimp, crab, and lobster. She also
reveals her deep fear of snakes and presents
other dangerous animals such as polar bears,
elephants, box jellyfish, alligators, and sharks.
Yuree shares that painting these animals in
playful ways is partly an attempt to deal with
her own fears.
Atmosfear, by Yuree Kensaku, is an
evolving project on view at 100 Tonson Gallery
through the end of October 2016, and will be
followed by a second exhibition in November,
featuring a series of new paintings from Yuree.
Don’t miss the opening party for Atmosfear on
Thusday, June 23, 2016, from 19:00 hrs onward.
(100tonsongallery.com)
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