Channatip Chanvipava: The Sound of Many Waters

VernissageTV

Coinciding with the Venice Art Biennale 2024, Roman Road presents a solo exhibition curated by Marisa Bellani dedicated to the artist Channatip Chanvipava. Titled “The Sound of Many Waters”, the show features eight new works that explore the notions of fixed identities, belonging and subjective memory. The exhibition is on view at Dimora ai Santi, Calle Larga Giacinto Gallina, Canneregio 6381, 30121, Venezia, and runs until May 27, 2024.  Channatip Chanvipava: The Sound of Many Waters. Venice (Italy), April 16, 2024.  Press text (excerpt):  Aligning with this year's Biennale theme 'Foreigners Everywhere’, Bellani turns to water as a powerful reference to address the concepts of queer identity and connection in a divided world. These are vibrantly expressed in Chanvipava’s work which navigates queer sensibilities with immense power and emotion. Water, in this instance, becomes a symbol of both connection and division, resonating with the complexities of queer identity.  Based in London, Channatip Chanvipava is a self-taught painter who embarked on his artistic journey after a degree in Economics, driven by an enduring passion for art cultivated since a young age. His unique style, marked by distinctive and bold brushstrokes inspired by the impressionists, seamlessly oscillates between abstraction and figuration. Notably, Chanvipava's compositions are characterized by layered, thick, and vibrant paint textures distinguished by vertical lines outlining forms. His organic and meditative artistic process relies on intuition and fragments of memory, pieced together to create a ‘tapestry’ of recollections. He navigates through colour as a vehicle to express form, bringing to light moments of reflection, contemplation and liberation. Without employing preliminary sketches or physical references, he paints directly on canvas and relies solely on memory and his acute understanding of space and depth.

Transcript

00:00 [ Background noise ]

00:28 My name is Marisa Bellani. I'm the curator of this exhibition, which is a solo show by

00:34 Shanatib Shanvipava called The Sound of Many Waters. This exhibition came

00:40 together after talking with the artist about this new body of work, which is

00:46 highly autobiographical and speaks, each painting speaks of one episode of his

00:55 life that has in recent years marked his growth and evolution through the many

01:04 years today. The water came as metaphor for connectedness and fluidity, which are

01:17 two important themes as well in this exhibition, talking about queerness,

01:21 sensibilities, temporality, and Venice was like such a perfect place to talk about

01:30 this because everything here is connected by water. It seems so obvious

01:35 to do it here. Then we, the first painting that Shanatib finished was this one,

01:43 which is Triumph of Life. It's a man riding a horse. This is a painting about

01:54 hope and I think from what our discussion, what he said was it's one of

02:01 the painting where you can relate personally to most, as in the figure

02:07 being maybe him, which is not the case in others. His works are between

02:15 abstraction and figuration, but very much leaning towards abstraction. There is

02:23 also a big work on the way he paints and how he applies layers after layers. The

02:35 drying time between each one is very long because he used like thick layers,

02:40 which is also very interesting for this exhibition about time and about

02:45 going back and forward. From going to his studio I could see like at different

02:51 stages of the painting, I could see how they would evolve and how he would

02:56 settle on the final result. Also through a conversation about colors, which

03:06 was not the case in his early paintings. They were more monochromatic white and

03:11 way less vivid like this. Colors have come into play recently, like maybe in

03:20 the past year, and they now represent an emotion. He attached an emotion to each

03:25 color, but not each color will tell one emotion. It's not as straightforward as

03:29 this. And then I think to talk about his brush paint and the symbols that are in

03:37 his painting, which you can find a lot, like the heart here, the hearts that are

03:44 here as well, like here, here, there, that they come back in each work and they also

03:52 come back in the small works. And these are very important. The two lines are the

04:03 heart center and it's like how he grounds himself. And my understanding,

04:08 which is always maybe personal, but my understanding is that each work being so

04:13 personal, it's always an event that it goes through and he overcomes it through

04:18 the painting. And he marks this is done when the two heart centers are there and

04:26 they are everywhere, but I don't see any here or maybe it's hidden, which maybe

04:32 means that the future fertile is still something pending and something that he

04:37 still needs to go through. This is a painting which depicts very abstractly

04:45 the rooms of a clinic where you can do like a, what's it called, like when you

04:55 want fertilizing. So he did like this and it was like very like one room

05:02 after another and it's very clinical and the green is obviously a color of hope

05:07 and you know and looking at the future. Then there are little gems like this one

05:18 which is a concentrate of his technique because also Charnaty is not a

05:28 conceptual artist, it's not all about what it means. Obviously it means a lot

05:32 to him and they also convey a more universal message to which we can all in

05:38 our own way relate to, but what I find exceptional and this is also why we work

05:43 together is his painting skills, although he self-taught and learned it through a

05:50 lifetime. But this is like somewhere where you can really see how we can

05:56 layer and test and like the size of his brush which is always the same and how

06:02 we use it. It's also very visible in a painting like Lovers at First Sight.

06:12 There are a lot of these brushstrokes, it's very airy and I find that the way he can

06:23 depict completely different atmosphere every time and however having a very

06:30 strong mark of us being able to recognize it's him and it's his brushstroke

06:36 is actually quite exceptional. Like this one, Fantasy Room, is a completely

06:43 different atmosphere where it seems cramped and that's also why we've

06:49 put it here in the show. And the person on the painting, we don't know

06:57 if he's entering or exiting the room and this is his fantasy room and all of us

07:04 again it's something that is very related to him but it's also something

07:09 that we can all relate what are our fantasies, which one can we share, when do

07:15 we need to lock the door, when can we leave it open and let other people enter,

07:20 share them and this level of intimacy that is talked about in this painting.

07:29 Now for the whole exhibition what is quite exceptional and remarkable is the

07:37 location that we managed to find and how the artist has occupied the space

07:46 without changing it but with a lot of integrity and respect to the original

07:52 architecture as added the perimeter of his own world. So these walls that are

07:59 very like chunky and metal to reflect the water and the reflection, they also

08:04 serve as a perimeter for the show so we know that we are inside this world and

08:11 inside the message that he wants to tell us. However everything else has remained

08:18 untouched and as it was and we are very lucky of where it is, it's absolutely

08:24 beautiful and even the original ceilings which they look like water and with this

08:30 blue brushstrokes almost similar to his, it's quite lucky and yeah and I think

08:39 it's a beautiful exhibition because it's merged quality of works, installation

08:48 and message so I was very very honored to be part of it.

Category

Transcript

Recommended