This Saturday, June 15, Saun Santipreecha will be present at the gallery throughout the day (from Noon-onward) to lead visitors through his current solo exhibition at the gallery, “...These Things That Divide The World In Two....” At 3pm, he will discuss his work with the curator and anyone in the audience who has questions about the exhibition. The gallery will also have extended hours through 7pm. The exhibition is on view through June 22. (There will be a Closing Reception and Performance in the evening on Saturday, June 22.) …. Santipreecha tends to work archaeologically and de/constructively, carefully uncovering the layered histories, politics, and (auto)biographies that populate (but also personify, mythologize, and (dis)figure) any particular context that he engages through his practice. But his work seems to awaken a kind of ethics of neither here nor there, neither inside nor outside, that is never reducible to a disorientation or delirium. A followable path is formed. Errant, aberrant, but not confused. The questions are precise, but difficult to respond to. Who comes between? Or, how do I divide? A sustained reflection on a wound…. A collective cut— His work is careful. Whether he is working through the spaces and times of a person, place, system, or structure, he always maintains an attuned sensitivity to the erratic, lived, and intimate realities of these contexts by maintaining a painful openness to his personal relationships with these others, inners, and outers. There is a non-orientability to the exhibition—I can never completely account for my body’s multiple positions populating the installation—but there is also a sense of place. Of somewhere, someone (lovingly) nearby…. ____ <<The seed for this exhibition was planted many years ago when I first encountered the works of Samuel Beckett, which, like many, was a viewing of "Waiting for Godot," in my case, on YouTube very late (or early) one day. This was followed very soon afterwards by reading his first ‘three-in one’—"Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable"—the final novel of which forms the base strata of this installation. It took many years, and many more Beckett plays and prose, up to the writing of my essay “…perhaps that’s what I am, the thing that divides the world in two…: Samuel Beckett’s "The Unnamable", relational modularity and nationalism” from a prompt by the annual Samuel Beckett Society’s 2024 Beckett conference, "Beckett and Justice"(in which I’m incredibly honored to be taking part), to give me the courage to embark on this exhibition project. Central to much of my recent work and inquiry, is the tension and inevitable inextricability between subject and system, which I also see as intrinsic to Beckett’s work, in particular this first trilogy. This was the starting point for this work: viewing the gallery itself as both system and subject, and the spectators themselves as subjects—players—in the piece, composing and re composing fragments into the legible and non-legible. Hence the installation’s opening instruction: <Play out the system> and its four permutations which eventually arrive at what now reads <Out! Play the system>. Who, or what are we expelling? Which system are we playing out? Or outplaying? Us, or another? Where is the border between the self and the systems we are entwined in? Is it even possible to expel these embedded systems which predicates what is legible? How are we legible to ourselves and others? “Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of” (Samuel Beckett. "The Unnamable"(Germany: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 454).>> …. Saun Santipreecha is an interdisciplinary artist from Thailand who works in both visual and aural mediums. His artistic route in both disciplines began simultaneously, studying privately with two Thai Silpathorn Award recipients for Thai contemporary artists, visual artist Chalermchai Kositpipat and classical pianist/composer Nat Yontararak amongst other tutors and mentors. In 2008 he moved to Los Angeles where he pursued a career in music composition for film, collaborating with artists from multiple disciplines including fashion and video games while also working independently on projects culminating in the experimental album "Dandelye" (2022). His compositional work in film, TV, and fashion has been screened in over thirty film festivals worldwide including the Cannes Film Festival as well as at New York, Paris and LA Fashion Weeks. He has also worked in numerous capacities in the music department for a number of composers including John Debney, Danny Elfman, The Newton Brothers and Abel Korzeniowski. He had his debut solo exhibition as an artist in July, 2023 with his exhibition "Dandelye—or, Beneath this River’s Tempo’d Time We Walk" at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary in Los Angeles, CA. His first international solo exhibition, "Per/formative Cities | A Nest of Triptychal Performances", engages with three novels by Italo Calvino through a multimedia sound installation (February 29 – March 15 in Rome, Italy). His second solo exhibition in Los Angeles at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary is titled "...These Things That Divide The World In Two..." and coincides with his participation as a panel speaker at the 9th Annual Conference of the Samuel Beckett Society—"Beckett and Justice"—at California State University, Los Angeles (the exhibition is on view May 25 – June 22, 2024). Santipreecha’s first institutional exhibition, "[O-I-RI-R]", an installation in the (ADN) East German Guardhouse at the Wende Museum, is on view April 27 - September 15, 2024. His work has been in various group exhibitions in Incheon National University, South Korea, New York, and Los Angeles, and he continues to work with artists and specialists across disciplines. He is currently based in Los Angeles, CA. {Biographical text courtesy of the artist.} ___ Images and Recordings of the exhibition are viewable on the gallery’s website.