Advisor: Jason Paradis

Placements

Gallery Unbound, Rm 3212

Staller Center for the Arts

Stony Brook University

The act of dining not only represents a break from the work of the day but is also a designated time to assemble and socialize. Dinner in particular, being one of the few times of the day where people are naturally compelled to leave their busy lives and sit down, is a time where people are given the opportunity to connect with one another. There is intrinsic irony in the “social dinner;” not being a part of the interpersonal connection of those at the dinner table means feeling ostracized from the group. This is not to say that the social dinner takes only one form. Depending on the location or company of the dinner table, the effects of the social dinner may manifest in vastly different ways. Placements is the visualization of my personal experiences with this social disconnection through the obstruction of a painted dinner table with blank tableware. Painted on the table are four separate dinner table settings. These settings are at dinner with my extended family in Thailand, at the bar with my cousins in Thailand, at dinner in my childhood home in New York, and at dinner in my friend’s apartment in New York City. Disconnection, as expressed in the piece, is my inability to understand where I fit in the group dynamic of the people that I am dining with at each of these settings.

Placements, May 4, 2023

Placements is set as a gallery installation. As the viewer enters the gallery, they are immediately greeted by a singular dining room table in the center of the gallery space that is covered in a pile of found tableware that has been gessoed and painted solid white. Some of the tableware has spilled onto the worn-down Persian-inspired rug that the table sits on top of. The tableware includes various silverware, plates, bowls, cups, ornate serving dishes, candelabras, and bottles. At first impression, it is not clear that the table has been painted but the smell of fresh oil paint still lingers in the air. Yet because the table has been covered in the tableware, it is difficult to perceive what is painted on the table. Although the table is designed to comfortably fit four people, there are no chairs at the table. The only lights in the gallery are ten spotlights that shine directly onto the center of the table. There is considerable space surrounding the table and the gallery is essentially a white box. Despite the understanding that the table has been painted, all focus is on the chaotic setting of the tableware on the dinner table.

Each of the four separate dinner table settings where I have felt disconnection intersect my relationship with my Thai and American heritage through casual and formal personas. The surrounding scenery of each dinner table was then idealized and painted on the table at one of four designated place settings. The first dinner table setting is in the capital of Thailand, Bangkok, where most of my dinners have been spent maintaining a conservative persona with my extended Thai family and navigating the complexities of the Thai language. The second setting is of the bars that my cousins take me to in Thailand where I have felt the need to engage in self-destructive habits such as consuming alcohol in order to force a connection with the people around me. The third setting is of my childhood home on eastern Long Island, New York where I have felt physically isolated in a remote location. The fourth and final setting is of my friends’ apartment in New York City where I have great times socializing only to later feel like I am of no value to even my closest friends.

Upon closer inspection, small parts of the painting on the table are visible to the viewer. The entire table has been treated like a normal canvas and painted with thick, expressive paint strokes and fine detailing. The table invites the viewer to come close and attempt to connect with the painting. Yet, to visualize the social disconnection I have felt at the dinner table, I physically obstruct the viewer from being able to form a connection with the painting. Through covering the painted dinner table with white gessoed and painted tableware, I refuse to gratify the viewer with the full painting and impose my experience of not being able to consume the moment. The viewer has no choice but to address and examine the tableware covering the table. As the tableware has been gessoed and painted, much like me in the moments of disconnection from those around me at dinner, the tableware have now lost their function and identity to only become surrogate blank canvases. Because painting is my means of self-expression, these surrogate blank canvases serve to obstruct my self-expression. When the white tableware obstructs the painted table, my means of self-expression is also obstructed.

Placements, May 14, 2023

In reality, a real, functional dinner table changes every night; each dinner calls for a new table setting. The movement of the objects on a dinner table can be thought of as the mark of passing time. Each night, Placements becomes a performance. In the late afternoon, after I eat dinner, I close the gallery and manually reset the piling of the tableware on the dinner table. Similar to how I feel less, more, or differently disconnected and ostracized from the people around me at dinner, different parts of the painting may be less or more visible depending on the arrangement of the dinner table setting on any given day. Some days had nearly all of the solid white tableware on the table. Other days had a large quantity of the tableware sprawling across the rug and even escaping the confines of the rug and invading the larger space of the gallery. Due to the differing levels of clutter on the table, the viewer may be able to view and connect with different parts of the painting individually each day. However, the viewer is never able to view and connect with the full painting at once.

Placements, May 11, 2023

As the exhibition progressed, the oil paint on the table was slowly dragged and scraped away from the dinner table and transferred to the gessoed tableware, resulting in the painting becoming more damaged as the days moved forward. Inasmuch, the more time that is spent being unable to form a connection with the painting, the ability to ever connect with the completed painting on the table is wiped away, reinforcing the obstruction and disconnection felt. The slow destruction of the painting emphasizes the loss of the time and experience due to this social disconnection that is missed. Feeling alienated from one’s surroundings are time and experiences that one can never get back. Similarly, as the gessoed objects collect paint, they become a stain of lost potential.

Placements, May 16, 2023

The various types of tableware observed on the dinner table also correspond to the tableware that would appear in a correlative setting. The ornate serving dishes and candelabras were commonly seen in my holiday family gatherings. The whiskey, champagne, and beer glasses are the tableware used at the bars I go to with my cousins. An assortment of the plates and glasses are from my family restaurant down the street from my childhood home. Novelty mugs and mason jars are used at my friend’s apartment in order to easily identify which cup is who’s. Through the inclusion of the notable tableware, I bring the viewer into the specific moments that constitute the usage of each of the objects. Yet despite the notable nature of the tableware in each setting, when the tableware is jumbled together on and around the table, all of the corresponding moments blend together and drown each other out such that no individual object can maintain the viewer’s focus.

The absence of function and identity of the tableware is the representation of my absence of presence in the moment. When meals are shared on the table, a moment is created with those at the dinner table. Each person shares the same meal, however their experience is formed individually through sitting in the company of others. The disconnection that I feel from this experience prevents me from being able to savor both the food and the moment; essentially overpowering and negating the euphoria of eating my favorite foods and spending quality time with my favorite people. Like the meal of a ghost, the gessoed tableware has no life or flavor. I am alienated from the moment.

The purpose of a dinner table is to be a platform to keep food off the ground. Comfortably sitting at the seated torso level, the food is then more easily accessible, and therefore consumable. Often overlooked are the supports of the table that ensure that the food maintains its comfortable position, the legs. Yet in this case, Placements calls attention to the legs of the table as the only parts of the painting that are consistently visible each day. A parallel is then made between the support of the food and the ideologies that serve to support my conscience. Painted on the legs of the table are the specific experiences and objects that keep me grounded in each setting. The leg of the first setting contains the jumble of winding highways and roads that allow me to travel wherever I desire. The leg of the second setting is a beer glass which undeniably has let me loosen up to the point where I am able to bond with the people around me despite it being a bad habit. The leg of the third setting is of the abundant nature around my childhood home where I found tranquility. The leg of the fourth setting is of the Persian-inspired rugs that serve as a mark of home that I find familiar wherever I go.

Placements, May 10, 2023

Placements is the painting, installation, and performance of an exploration of the social disconnection and alienation I feel at various dinner tables and the settings that correspond to them. This disconnection is defined as my inability to understand where I fit in the group dynamic of the people that I am dining with at four different settings. These settings are a formal and a casual dinner gathering in Thailand, and a formal and a casual dinner gathering in New York. Through painting directly on a dinner table as I would a canvas, I express myself as a culmination of all of the dinner table experiences I have. Yet the disconnection has been physically visualized in the obstruction of the painting with a multitude of gessoed and painted white tableware with limited identity. Inasmuch, because painting is my means of self-expression, when the painting on the table is obstructed, the visualization of my self-expression is also obstructed. Although the setting of the tableware is reset each day such that less, more, or different parts of the painting are visible, the table is never completely cleared and thus the painting is never fully realized and visible at once. Similarly, the social disconnection and alienation that I have felt at the dinner table is ever changing but never completely gone. Ultimately, Placements is a piece that seeks to encapsulate the viewer in feelings of alienation from those around them at the dinner table.

Placements, May 17, 2023