Rirkrit Tiravanija

Pilar Corrias is delighted to present an exhibition of new work by
Rirkrit Tiravanija.



Born in 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Rirkit Tiravanija is widely
recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. His
practice defies media-based description combining traditional object
making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms of
public service and social action.



On the occasion of his second one person show in London Tiravanija has
created two major new works. Screened in the main space of the gallery
Lung Neaw (2010) an eight hour, nineteen minute long video portrait
charts a day in the life of an elderly Thai man known simply as Uncle
Neaw. Filmed in real time on the outskirts of Chiang Mai this continuous
slow motion footage recalls Andy Warhol's experimental filmmaking of
the early 1960s.



Lung Neaw is contrasted in both subject and medium with the second
piece on view in the lower gallery. Here an installation of seven 35mm
slide projectors documents a performance in which the gallery's Director
Pilar Corrias stood at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park recounting a day in
her life for the duration of a working day. Entitled Pilar 08/10/10 the work
references Marcel Broodthaers subversive silent performance of 1972 at
the same site. The performative description of a quotidian day in the
artworld scripted by the artist from Corrias's personal diary is at odds
with a site famously associated with political demonstration and the
vocalisation of extreme beliefs.



The exhibition of these two new works strictly corresponds to the
passage of an average working day. The work will only be view from 10
O'Clock in the morning until 6 O'clock in the evening. Tiravanija's first
exhibition with Pilar Corrias Gallery forms his second one-person
exhibition in London since his retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery in
2005.



Tiravanija studied at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, the Banff
Center School of Fine Arts, Canada, the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. He
has exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide. Major solo
retrospectives include Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997); Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (1999); Astrup Fearnley Museum of
Modern Art in Oslo (2002); Chiang Mai University Art Museum (2004);
Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen (2004); Museé de la Ville de Paris
(2005), and Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2010).



Tiravanija's work has been recognised with numerous prestigious awards
including the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in
Japan and the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist Award,
the Hugo Boss Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New
York (2004) and the 2010 Absolut Art Award.



Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts at Columbia
University, and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a
collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. Tiravanija is also
President of an educational-ecological project known as The Land
Foundation, located in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and is part of a collective
alternative space called VER located in Bangkok where he maintains his
primary residence and studio.

Rirkrit Tiravanija