Mit Jai Inn
Born in Buak Khang, Thailand, 1960
Lives and works in Chiang Mai
อุโมงค์ของผู้คน (People’s Tunnel), 2024
Metal structure, oil on canvas,
220 cm x 150 cm x 500 cm
People’s Tunnel is a polychromatic and immersive installation. Its structure is constructed with iron and covered with painted stripes of canvas screens of different sizes. From outside, the tunnel appears bold and colourful, almost mimicking in pattern the surrounding flower fields. Sunlight here plays an essential role, as it brings to life the pastel tones, creating a sort of artificial field, almost like glancing at a world within a world. This site-specific tunnel is for the artist the first ever to be slightly curved, therefore making it possible for the visitor to see clearly the exit, but only by standing in the centre. From inside, sun rays penetrate and cut the canvas vertically creating shifting shadows of this liminal space. This tunnel-like open shell becomes a sort of a conduit, where the energy is open and accessible without preconditions.
เสาแห่งผู้คน (People’s Pillar), 2024
Metal poles, oil on canvas
40cm x 40cm x 600 cm (10 pc)
People’s Pillar is a series of 10 iron poles, each crowned with long painted canvas strips. Scattered across an open field, the pillars create visual landmarks that connect the surrounding landscape, bridging the space between the campsite and the body of water. From a distance, these pillars emerge as notable points of reference, creating somewhat of a tool for an orientation system. These columns punctuate the field with colour in movement calling for gathering between them and the natural landscape. People’s Pillar invites viewers to engage with the landscape not just visually, but experientially, as each element, wind, light, and space, shapes the artwork into an evolving dialogue with its environment.
บีบ (Squeeze), 2024
Oil on canvas,
30cm x 30cm (36pc), 20cm x 20cm (1pc)
Squeeze is an experiment on physicality and material presence, composed of a home-made dense, tactile mixture including linseed oil and pigment that have been steadily applied onto the sheet of canvas. This series, an evolution of the previous Smashed series, recalls the force of heavy industrial printing machines but with an organic feeling, where the sense of weight and gravity is reminded visually and tactilely. These gestural acts of pressure, serve as a declaration of presence, capturing a moment of forceful impact as a lasting imprint on the surface.
ศาลาจิตรกรรม (Sala Murals), 2024
Oil on canvas,
100cm x 150cm (6pc), 50cm x 150cm (2pc)
Sala Murals presents itself with abstract forms and the earthy colour palette that feel as if they have emerged from an ancient world. Each work seems like fragments recovered from an archeological site carrying traces of a human need for annunciation. It suggests remnants of primal markings, symbols of an age-old need to communicate and to sanctify spaces. The shapes are subtle, sometimes barely discernible, as if they have been weathered by time.
Mit Jai Inn is a prominent contemporary artist celebrated for his distinctive color-based artworks. Employing palette knives, hands, and fingers, Mit creates vibrant, densely layered pieces that defy conventional boundaries of painting, embodying both manual and optical labor.
Rooted in a rigorous physicality, his works serve as a channel for responding to aesthetic, social, and political contexts. His practice reflects a diverse range of histories, from traditional divisions between ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ painting to Thailand’s shifting political landscape. Since returning to Thailand in 1992, Jai Inn has been involved in socially and politically engaged art campaigns. He was a co- founder of three non-institutional initiatives central to Thai art practice and discourse: Chiang Mai Social Installation, the Midnight University and The Land Foundation. In 2015, he founded Cartel Artspace in Bangkok, a gallery that gives free space to artists reflecting on the country and region’s political history and current context. In 2017, he co-initiated the independent Bangkok Biennale.
Text Credit : https://www.silverlensgalleries.com/artists/mit-jai-inn