Sakarin Krue-On

Sakarin Krue-On (January 7, 1965) is a contemporary Thai visual artist.

His works are often site-specific installations with traditional Thai cultural influences.

Krue-On is an art instructor, an advisor for postgraduate students, and the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts at Silpakorn University.

Krue-On resides and works in the metropolitan area of Bangkok, although his projects and exhibitions frequently take him out of Thailand.

Krue-On was born in Mae Hong Son, a northwestern Thai province.

He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Silpakorn University in 1989, under the supervision of Chalood Nimsamer.

Krue-On has created a number of solo works, in addition to collaborating with other artists and presenting exhibitions at galleries and institutions.

He specializes in site-specific installations, and sometimes works with local communities to produce his works.

His pieces are often sculptural, but he also uses video and paintings.

His work highlights the virtues of traditional Thai culture, such as rice farming practices, temple paintings, and Buddhist imagery, while blending Western and local techniques of printmaking, drawing, sculpting, and painting.

The artist created a similar installation, "Nang Fa (Angel)" in 2007 for the Neue Gallerie in Kassel, Germany.

According to the 'Europe Grand Tour of Contemporary Art' an article by Julia Chaplin in on May 28, 2007, New York Times the 'Terraced Rice Field Art Project' was written about as following

2007 was a time when rice planting was not a popular subject and popular activity to be shown in various occasion as in nowaday.

Sakarin came up with the idea of applying the terrace for rice plantation on the hillside at Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel at the first time he went to the city to survey the sites.

In a concept background he cited in his original proposal of the project, Sakarin stated that

".....The site-specific installation Terraced Rice Fields Art Project seeks to create rice fields on the slope leading up to the prestigious Wilhelmshöhe Museum in Kassel. It is an effort to create something in an entirely different and unlikely context, and to fuse two completely opposing sets of cultural beliefs concerning both anthropology and sociology. On one hand, the architecturally brilliant and powerful Wilhelmshöhe, guardian of historical artefacts; and on the other, Terraced Rice Field, a testimony to manís conquest over his environment and a symbol of growth and co-operation. Although they differ in form, both structures have similar humanitarian attributes; their aim is to protect and nurture mankind.

This will be done through agriculture activity, a tradition born from primitive time, a tool to test the co-operation of people.

This project will enlist help of the people of Kassel, both locals and foreigners.

It is hoped that by working together to create these fields, the idea of ‘self’ and the division of labour in modern society will be put to question.

The study of this simple yet effective farming method will also prove that the contemporary social system we live in is not the only way.

A system such as farming may look so primitive and disconnected from daily life in Europe that it seems like a romantic notion, but in fact farming still continue to be a source of sustenance in countries all over the world.

Terraced Rice Fields stresses the importance of the process, and not the end product.

In 2009, Krue-On was the recipient of the Silpathorn Award for the category of visual arts, presented by the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture.

The work also contemporarily showed in other famous art galleries, such as in exhibition "Murals" at Fundacio Joan Miró in Barcelona, Spain in 2010 and at Pearl Lam Gallery in Shanghai, China in 2016.

"Cloud Nine (Lom lom Lang lang)" was installed in the 100 Tonson gallery in Bangkok.

The Thai part of the name means "empty hope."

The project was a two-room installation; one room featured many white porcelain figurines of street dogs with feathery red angelic wings, devouring a banquet.

The second room displayed video footage of real puppies in feeding from their mother.

The work was installed again in 2012 as part of exhibition " Panorama: Recent Art from Contemporary Asia" at Singapore Art Museum, Singapore.

"...The show - 120 artists from the Congo to Australia - takes an outsider's view of the commercial art world. To keep an element of surprise, Documenta does not reveal the list of artists until the final hour. Among the known participants is Sakarin Krue-On from Thailand, who is creating a Southeast Asian terraced rice field on a hillside outside an 18th-century palace as a large-scale earth-art culture clash..."

In 2013 the work was brought to Hong Kong Art Basel by 100Tonson gallery and was well received as one of the selected high-light.

"Terraced Rice Field" was created for Documenta 12 outside of the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe museum building.

With the help of local volunteers, Krue-On created a functioning terraced rice field on the side of the nearby hill.

In 2016 he won Prudential Eye Lifetime Achievement Award which made in recognition of an artist with an international track record for his or her contributions to the field of Asian contemporary art over the course of a lifetime.

In addition to the award, Niru Ratnam, Director of Prudential Eye Programme citing his work as "Whilst other successful Asian artists have sited their practice within a global language of contemporary practice, Krue-On continues to work through nuances specific to Asian cultural identity. For this, and for his international success, he is the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the third Prudential Eye Awards."

"Temple" was the first solo work by Krue-On, exhibited in a café and gallery, About Art Related Activities (AARA) in Bangkok.

In this work, he transformed three different rooms of the gallery area into spaces for meditation, drawing influences from traditional Thai mural painting.

The stencils took the forms of traditional Thai (not Buddhist) deities.

The designs on the walls were created to fade over time, slowly becoming invisible.

The work coincided with an economic crisis in Thailand.