Produced for the Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai (2023), Solarium is a recreation of the artist’s childhood horror film, The Hollow-Eyed Ghost (1981). The original film tells the story of a doctor who murders a man to steal his eyes for his blind girlfriend. The man’s spirit then haunts the neighbourhood, searching for his stolen eyes, only to be ultimately destroyed by the rising sun.
The installation places the audience in the mindset of this wandering ghost, lost in darkness and desperately seeking vision. The work selectively reconstructs fragmented memories of the ghost’s actions, drawn from the artist’s recollections. The protagonist is played by Banlop Lomnoi, who previously appeared in Tropical Malady (2004). The multimedia setup transforms the exhibition space into an echo chamber in which a spirit seeks for his inner self.
The aesthetic of Solarium pays homage to early experimental cinema, particularly the light-based darkroom experiments of Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Fernand Léger. The ghost’s experience is visualised through flickers, slashed rays of light, transparency, and shadows.
The ghost, like a filmmaker, is always in search for an apparatus to experience light. The title hints at the ghost's inability to escape this dreamlike state, forever trapped in a solarium of his own creation, yearning for the warmth light of the sunrise.
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