Chart Art Fair

Prior to CHART the two artists, Apichaya Wanthiang and Anna Daniell will spend time in the “satellite CHART booth” at Galleri Brandstrup in Oslo. During this period, they will make new artworks together, out of leftover parts of their earlier paintings and sculptures.

Although they have participated in two group exhibitions together before, the two artists have never previously directly collaborated. During their first conversation discussing their collaboration for Chart Art Fair, they discovered a joint curiosity; what is an art fair? Who and what does it represent? How can we, as artists, explore this trough our art practices? Artists collaborations are not new, but within the frame of an art fair, it suddenly felt more intriguing. “Making art together can represent many different qualities, but in our case, I think the thrill of not knowing what we are going to make, how it will end up looking, smelling and sounding was a key motivation. Somehow these questions seemed, at least, if not more relevant than the making of the artwork themselves!”

Daniell and Wanthiang decided on a conceptual frame, made decisions regarding working time, location and materials. As the very act of making joint artworks laid at the core of this project, they decided to limit the process to the given location and work within a short timeframe, in order to generate high energy. “We decided that all the works should be made inside the fair booth during the five days leading up to the fair.  The artworks we will show at CHART will not be ready until the very day of the opening.”

“Questions that occupy us are plentiful, for example; are artworks that is ‘quickly’ made, under playful and improvisational conditions perceived as less valuable? Is it lesser in value then work that is made through year-long collaborations? We will also give away information that you seldom get as a spectator; under other circumstances, the spectator would not get a precise idea about how an artwork came about, how long it took to make and so on. There’s still a mysticism that set art labour apart from other labour. From where we stand, there’s a lot to explore here. Maybe it is our way of understanding and building a relationship with the market.”

The two artists individually decided on their own material but agreed to bring in bits and pieces from earlier sculptures and paintings, as well as other left-over materials. The artistic theme and visual outcome will not be decided on prior to the 5 days of their collaborative workshop. These decisions were made to enhance chance, to work with what is at hand in an unplanned way.