[im]print

Chua Chye Teck, Marc Gloede, Hilmi Johandi, Wei Leng Tay with guest artist Tanatchai Bandasak

19 October - 10 December 2023

STORAGE Bangkok

[im]print  stands as the latest artistic endeavour from the Singapore art collective, Progressive Disintegrations. Marking their inaugural international collaboration, the collective partners with Thai artist Tanatchai Bandasak, whose conversation with members of Progressive Disintegrations first began during a residency in Singapore in 2019, and the Bangkok art space STORAGE.

Rooted in the building’s historical context, this collaborative venture gives rise to an exhibition wherein the essence of print takes centre stage. STORAGE, situated within a former printing press in Bangkok, becomes the focal point of this exploration. Building upon Progressive Disintegrations’ prior project in Singapore which examined the concept of the White Cube and the collective’s deep interest with the unique spatial configurations of exhibition sites, this exhibition project dives into the intricate layers

of printing and imprinting. Individually and collectively, members of Progressive Disintegrations delve into diverse aspects of the printing process, exploring the idea of print through various mediums such as photography, painting, installation, woodblock prints, performance, and published materials.

Together with guest artist Tanatchai Bandasak, the group contemplates how the site’s history and the artists’ individual practices can intertwine, giving rise to a project that melds architectural inquiry, memory, relational dynamics, and cultural exchange, all through an expansive lens of printed art forms. 

This exhibition at STORAGE is the sixth presentation of resultant works, and invites the audience to spatially experience the outcome of this process and the correspondences and echoes in the works. The fifth iteration of the collaboration – a book installation developed prior to the exhibition - can be seen right in the entrance to the exhibition.

When we think about a printed exhibition publication and its relationship to a corresponding exhibition, a temporal structure is often introduced in which the publication is necessarily a follow-up that occurs only after the exhibition is realised. For [im]print, the artists wanted to reverse this timeline and conceptualise a book project that would serve as a starting point for the project and all further developments, rather than being the end result. In this way, the book became an initial meeting point for individual ideas and experimentation with aesthetic strategies. This idea of establishing a book as a platform for initial experimentation was not just tied to the individual practices, but also allowed for thinking about ways to collaborate and correspondences between methods of working. This led to the form this book would eventually take. The result of this exchange – 5 stacked wooden boxes filled with works by the participating artists – can be seen right in the entrance of the exhibition. Upon request the boxes can be opened and the contents can be activated individually by the audience.

Click to view Exhibition Booklet