Bangkok Kunsthalle would like to present the works of the late American artist Richard Nonas. Born in 1936 in Brooklyn, New York, Nonas was a sculptor whose post-minimalist sculptures were greatly informed by his former career as an anthropologist. The five privately-owned pieces that form the exhibition were part of the Panza Collection.
During his decade-long career as an anthropologist, Richard Nonas conducted fieldwork among various Native American tribes. One such tribe was the Tohono Oʼodham people of Mexico, who introduced Nonas to a novel cultural framework through which to understand space. Informed by the barren desert they presided in, the Tohono Oʼodham understood space by way of “markers”—objects with shifting meanings contingent on both physical context and the individual who engaged with the object. Nonas introduces the analogy of a cactus in the desert to best illustrate this concept: an individual might associate the cactus with a particular memory, while another might understand the cactus as a landmark, a navigational device. For another individual, the cactus might be associated with a folktale, and thus becomes a cultural object intertwined with collective memory. The potency of Nonas’ sculptures lies in their ambiguity and rejection of objective semantics; the sculptures elude prescribed meaning, instead their meanings are malleable and in a state of flux.
Richard Nonas’ sculptures, primarily minimal rectangular and linear forms created using metal and wood, can be understood as spatial “markers” themselves—much like the cactus in the desert. The objects when paired with a space have the ability to convey impressions and prompt memories. They explore the artist’s fascination with the idea of transforming spaces into places, an operation that is crucial to Nonas’ artistic program.
Not only was Nonas interested in “place-making”, however, he was equally interested in the ambiguity that arises when placing sculptural objects in a space. Here ambiguity, tension and liminality are emphasized through cultural relativity and dichotomies of space and place, recognizable and abstract forms, physical and imagined space, memory and reality.
The works exhibited at Bangkok Kunsthalle fall under two categories: linear and rectangular forms. Nonas’ linear constructions demarcate the borders of an imagined place, best exemplified by Boundry Man (1974). This massive work is comprised of two perpendicular steel lines – one 17 meters and the other 14 meters – that intersect two rooms. By extending through the physical partitions of the exhibition space, the work delineates the boundaries of an imagined place, one that cannot physically exist. Furthermore, the sheer scale of the work denies the spectator a singular, comprehensive viewing. Instead one must move around the work, then rely on memory to complete the scene. Again, Nonas generates a sense of ambiguity, between reality and memory, past and present and of shifting optical perspectives. To complement the linearity, Nonas introduces rectangular forms, which become monuments in his imagined landscape. These steel works lay low to the ground, their abstract polygonal forms reaching toward ambiguous associations. When considering these pieces, one might recall the floorplan of a childhood bedroom, Mesoamerican platforms or an altar table. Like that, the exhibition space becomes a place, one that shifts between the realm of nostalgia, an archaeological dig or Sunday mass. With this in mind, the locality and positioning of the works become as crucial as the objects themselves.
The site of Bangkok Kunsthalle, which occupies the abandoned Thai Wattana Panich building, offers the ideal stage for the artist’s work: the repurposed nature of the building echoes the liminality engendered by Nonas’ sculpture. More than this, the exhibition takes place in the cleared front lobby of the building, a space on the verge of becoming a place.
10 Janvier - 30 Mars 2025
