Atmosphere in the Virtual museum + Experience + Emotion = Canvas Exhibition

Atmosphere in the Virtual museum + Experience + Emotion = Canvas Exhibition

Artist: Jarasporn Chumsri

Curator: Pakorn klomkliang

Exhibition date: 22 May – 27 June 2021, 11.00 – 20.00 hrs. The Jam Factory

*No admission fee

While the COVID-19 pandemic suspended activities and disrupted all aspects of our lives, Jarasporn has been trying to find potential matter from such dire circumstance. As an introvert, socializing and hanging out with others are not her cup of tea. As a result, she spends most of her time painting in the studio. She considers herself lucky for being born and living in the era that digital platforms allow her to stay connected even without leaving the studio.

As mentioned above, Jarasporn came across Google’s newly created platform called Google Arts & Culture, an application that compiles contents about museums, art galleries and heritage sites all over the world. Thus, remote audience can appreciate them on digital screens.

Jarasporn’s paintings in this exhibition were inspired by the combination of the atmosphere inside those virtual museums that she visited online and her firsthand experiences when visiting those places in person. Her work also examines an alternative definition of the world-renowned masterpieces she has seen on digital platforms.

In fact, paintings of museum landscapes are not novel. When Jarasporn had opportunities to witness genuine works in actual museums, she grew thrilled beyond words. The paintings being displayed right in front of her have been through countless of significant historic events for more than hundreds of years, before they were recognized as international masterpieces worth studying about. When she was an art student, she could only appreciate them on websites or library books because they had not been made available virtually in high resolution yet.

The moment she learned about Google introducing Google Art & Culture, she felt as if she were brought back to her museum tours. She also virtually attended other museums that she ever wanted to go, but has not got an opportunity to do so in real life.

Apparently, virtual tours of those museums seem so real. With Google’s latest augmented technology, artworks and artifacts were brought to life with a high-resolution zoom viewer. (However unparalleled to the actual ones, they are artistic sustenance for the time physical access have been banned.) Galleries’ interiors, such as light, ambient and floor plans, are depicted realistically as well.

Ultimately, this exhibition involves Jarasporn’s perspective. The artist would like to discuss the concept behind her masterpiece developing after viewing them on social networks and digital platforms.

Oftentimes, her mind is in a state of utter confusion when pondering about her work. She keeps telling herself that the prototypes she re-painted are data on digital platforms, not masterpiece reproduction, although they can be linked to.

When the images of masterpieces which became part of her exhibition were expressed in terms of the images of virtual museums, the looming confusion disappeared. That is because her paintings were given a new interpretation as the museum landscape.

All prototype paintings in this exhibition belong to prominent painters who influence Jarasporn’s style in her early and current career. She has been taught about their concepts, techniques, and styles throughout her studies. In addition, since digital screens are the original source of her paintings, Jarasporn discovered that images on screen are made up of three primary colors (hues): red, green, and blue. When all of them appear simultaneously on black screen, our human eyes perceive them as white. On the other hand, when these primary colors align in a certain way, they generate magenta, yellow and cyan.

She adapted the knowledge of light and colors for her collection development by painting on landscape size canvas, as the canvas length resembles the size of the screen on which she took virtual museum tours. She also coated the canvas in black to represent the screen with an absence of light. Red, green, blue, magenta, yellow, cyan, and white were used as main colors in this collection.