A persisting fear with conceptual art is that you are being made a fool of. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's 2008 video works are ostensibly about cultural preconceptions and the difficulties of interpretation, but her participants are often left looking ignorant and unsophisticated. For the videos, she placed reproductions of 19th-century Western masterpieces in forests and fields and had Thai villagers discuss the paintings.
When faced with Edouard Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass" (1862), they chime in one after another, "Are you pointing at her tits?," "Her face is fresh, fresh like fresh chicken droppings" and "If we walk inside the painting it could be so cool." It is a little amusing and a bit pathetic.
"Kaza Ana / Air Hole: Another Form of Conceptualism from Asia," featuring nine Asian-born individual artists or groups, is a conceptual confusion. In the catalog, which engages in hyperbole to trump up what is occasionally minor stuff, the first half of the title is explained to convey a "new wind" that will "dismantle frameworks" and offer "infinite possibilities" of art. But much of the work is simply a rehash of old ideas.
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