BANGKOK.- [dip] is presenting Indian artists Thukral & Tagra’s first solo show in Thailand.

Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra work collaboratively with a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, installations, interactive games, video, performance and design. Thukral & Tagra work on new formats of public engagement and attempt to expand the scope of what art can do. They break out of the mediated and disciplinary world and create multimodal sensory and immersive environments.

Their earlier work dealt with tropes of migration and motifs of a globally manifested consumer culture. It questioned the provenance of Indian identity and its various articulations. Their recent work has dealt with the interpretation of Indian mythological narratives and symbols in ways that renew and enliven a largely pedantic and static area of cultural material.

From a pop visual character to a predominantly abstract visual approach and compositional philosophy, Thukral & Tagra constantly shift in terms of their grammar and vocabulary. The abstract suggestions of an everyday experience of architecture and urban design in Gurgaon (Haryana, India) and Chandigarh (Punjab, India) is embedded in their visual language. They have offered sociopolitical commentary that is implicit in their aesthetic for the past fifteen years.

The exhibition explores the idea of transposing Indian mythology into a Thai context by rejuvenating narratives and symbols to give an updated dimension to our traditional understanding of cultural matter and living in ethical solidarity.

The exhibition is an extension to the series Play Pray/Set Point. Since 2015 the Artists have explored the idea of “play” from a cultural, strategic and psychological perspective, with the project Play Pray. Since 2017, with the exhibition Set Point, they explore mythology, in particular Indian, with rejuvenating narrative and symbols to give a fresh dimension to the traditional understanding of cultural matter.

This exhibition, their first solo show in Thailand, continues the portrayal of mythological events and mathematical assertions through the vocabulary of sports. It is a musing experience of a conscious being trapped in the perplexity of the set of circumstances keeping Ramakien/Ramayana as a central paradigm.

The being is conditioned to think, the fragments of social construct demands either to speculate or contemplate. The mind of the being is itinerant, weighed by dilemmas, dignity, love, loyalty, devotion and duty.

The artwork seeks to make explicit motifs that are implicit in a contemporary realm.

The exhibition includes a set of Prints (silk screen on archival foil print) which represent the foundation of our cultural code and which are at the base of our society, and are Dilemma, Dogma, Law, Tradition, Devotion, Loyalty, Obedience, Intelligence. This work, Mythological Induction is a depiction of the foundation of social construct of society. Every fragment of each lithograph leaves a mark of virtues on cultural ethical code. The venn diagrams shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different relationships. The insertion of suggestive metaphors re-imagines the informational venn diagrams, transforming the conservative form into a visceral viewing experience. The exhibition includes two paintings. The paintings are a dense mass of battlefields. The being walks the sinuous passage that faces a constant predicament to go either way, he is constantly thrown into the court where it loses the ability to figure what is the surface of the table or the edge of it. But with the contemplated system of thoughts, instincts and consciousness, the ball finds its way through the rational conduct of the society.

It features an installation, a Ping Pong table which is imagined as an arena which mirrors the tangibility of the actions. The humble legs of the table are caught in a fragile act, attempting to support the weight of the rational conduct. Hovering between the push and pull of the forces, the ball is an insignificant speck in the massive arena. Its journey is precarious at any moment it threatens to slip between negatives or the positives.

PLAY PREY POP OUT is a project by [dip] contemporary art, developed in collaboration with Central Embassy, where the exhibition takes place.