Olarn Chiaravanont was born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1986, and presently resides in London. In 2008, he received his BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London. In 2012 Chiaravanont received his MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Selected solo exhibitions include raum1, Galerie koal, Berlin (2013); OLARN CHIARAVANONT, Galerie koal, Berlin (2012); Deep Dots, WTF Gallery, Bangkok (2011).
Selected group exhibitions include Painted Realities, Hanmi Gallery, London (2014); MFA Fine Art Degree show, Goldsmiths, London (2012); The Mind and The Mood (curated by Samuel Gross), Galerie koal, Berlin (2012); MFA Fine Art Interim Show, Goldsmiths, London (2011); Life Transition, The Wall @ The Gallery, Willesden Green Library centre, London (2009); The Autumn Salon, Islington Art Factory, London (2008).
Words courtesy of Galerie koal
Olarn Chiaravanont‘s paintings are characterized by lightness and reduced clarity: circular and organic forms as well as drippings float in space weightlessly. They seem almost naïve but are, in fact, precisely calculated; every painterly decision is meticulously conceived and apodictically implemented.
The result is an elemental, primary language of forms, which
confidently moves between the worlds, eluding definitive cultural
or art historical categorization. Along the path from the Modernism
of the mid-20th century to today‘s postmodernism Chiaravanont finds
an individual present in the alloy of all kinds of influences.
Almost without exception, color and form mingle here in the optical
sense only and do not dissolve, but retain their integrity. The
backgrounds are prepared with a broad brush, vigorously flat, often
monochromatic. They provide the basis of the various interrelations
they enter: painted or poured, overlapping and intersecting, in
complex layers or reduced, free-standing, at a distance to each
other.
This dynamic that is carried into the picture is an essential
characteristic of Chiaravanont‘s way of painting. His artistic
practice oscillates between control and accident, between
figuration and abstraction. The concurrent use of acrylic and
oil-based paints further allows the artist to expand his extensive
painterly vocabulary. It affords him a freedom to open up to the
unforeseen. Chiaravanont not only makes room for the possibility of
mistakes, he downright presupposes them – because every painting
leaves something open to the artist, it supplies the impulse to
create the next work.
Website: www.olarn.net
