Cho Why # Art Exhibition # Daan Botlek

DAAN BOTLEK’s first solo exhibition in Asia

A block party art exhibit brought to you by Toot Yung Gallery, hosted by Cho Why, El Chiringuito, Food Court and Hub Sai Dek

From the 14th to the 22nd of March 2015 – Chinatown (Soi Nana)

The Toot Yung nomad gallery is proud to present “Inhabited Hypercube”, Daan Botlek’s first solo exhibition in Asia, as the first “Nomad Project”, outside of Ekamai’s old gallery walls.

Three spaces will host “INHABITED HYPERCUBE,” an exploded solo exhibition of Daan Botlek’s latest works produced during his three-months residency in Bangkok. Large-scale paintings on canvas, posters, silkscreen prints, laser cut art objects will be scattered between Cho Why, Food Court and El Chiringuito. Street wall paintings by Botlek will link the three spaces.

In addition, street art meets street kids during the seven-day event, providing daily workshops for the children at Hub Sai Dek lead by DJ Marine Caillat and professional street artists Daan Botlek, Rg86, Toska, Thibaud Tcherchian, Jeff Ross and Jesus A.D. from Europe and the United States. The artists will be passing on the torch, teaching and mentoring the children on the essentials, codes, and skills of graffiti, street art and hip hop culture.

The multidisciplinary event will take place from Saturday the 14th to Sunday 22nd March 2015, linking different emerging cultural, art and social spaces in Soi Nana, Chinatown.

The opening block party will kick off on Saturday 14 at 6 p.m. beginning with a rooftop cocktail bar set up at Chow Why’s, special Tapas served at El Chiringuito and street food vendors cooking favorite Thai dishes all evening. From 9 p.m. to midnight, patrons can dance to the minimal tech beats of DJ Marine Caillat, with visuals by VJ Gabriel Camelin, inspired by Botlek’s graphic works, scattered throughout the streets.

The exhibition will close with an afternoon street party on Sunday March 22. A live jam by RhuBarb & CusTard, Live street art by international Bangkok based artists, street food and bar can be expected, as well as the grand display of the final fruits from the workshops of the children of Hub Sai Dek and participating artists to be put up for sale as fundraising.

CONTACT:
Toot Yung Gallery
Myrtille Tibayrenc
08 491 454 99
[email protected]
www.tootyunggallery.com

( For those who didn’t follow the latest news, the space in Ekamai soi 2 has closed down since December 2014… Until we build a new venue, Toot Yung will be creating events with partner spaces)

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About Daan Botlek:

Daan Botlek is a black sheep in the field of art. Even though he is famous for his wide and impressively achieved wall paintings it wouldn’t do justice to label him as a street artist as his body of works is diverse, complex and becomes meaningful only when considered as a whole. From miniature drawings to huge wall paintings Botlek’s mysterious and fascinating imagination is immediately recognizable. In the lineage of Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, Botlek plays with architecture, perspective and impossible spaces with a humorous acid twist. When confronted to one of his pieces, the viewer often experiences estrangement, what is actually happening? What is here to see? Botlek plays with his characters, as he plays with the viewers. Even though every element in his paintings or drawings is recognizable, as a whole, the meaning of it slips away into abstraction or the absurd. Botlek creates clear and minimalistic images of surreal situations. A humanlike character dominates his works but lately man-made structures and abstract shapes have become a main focus.

For the first time Botlek will be experimenting painting on canvas. The geometric boxlike shape of the canvas led him to work on the subject of the limits of space and how to play with the impression of dimension within a closed box. He will also explore new ways of creating three-dimensional works.

Botlek draws bridges between paradoxes: the finite and infinite, the miniature and the gigantic, the bi dimensional and tri dimensional, the figurative and the abstract, the possible and the impossible. By doing so he questions the world in the fashion of a poetic scientist or mathematician. We often sense in his art the notion of entrapment. The characters are either trapped in space, or in their own body. Perhaps Botlek is trying to make us sense the narrowness and weight of our present society and that there are unexplored dimensions ready to be discovered.