Rirkrit Tiravanija

Born in 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Rirkit Tiravanija is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. His practice defies media-based description combining traditional object making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms of public service and social action.

On the occasion of his second one person show in London Tiravanija has created two major new works. Screened in the main space of the gallery Lung Neaw (2010) an eight hour, nineteen minute long video portrait charts a day in the life of an elderly Thai man known simply as Uncle Neaw. Filmed in real time on the outskirts of Chiang Mai this continuous slow motion footage recalls Andy Warhol's experimental filmmaking of the 1960s.

Lung Neaw is contrasted in both subject matter and medium with the second piece on view in the lower gallery. Here an installation of seven 35mm slide projectors documents a performance in which the gallery's Director Pilar Corrias stood at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park recounting a day in her life for the duration of a working day. Entitled Pilar 06.10.10 the work references Marcel Broodthaers subversive silent performance of 1972 at the same site. The performative description of a quotidian day in the artworld scripted by the artist from Corrias's personal diary is at odds with a site famously associated with demonstration and the vocalization of extreme religious and political beliefs.

The exhibition of these two new works strictly corresponds to the passage of an average working day. The work will only be view from 10 O'Clock in the morning until 6 O'clock in the evening. Tiravanija's first exhibition with Pilar Corrias Gallery forms his second one-person exhibition in London since his retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery in 2005.

Tiravanija studied at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, the Banff Center School of Fine Arts, Canada, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. He has exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide. Major solo retrospectives include Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1999); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo (2002); Chiang Mai University Art Museum (2004); Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen (2004); Museé de la Ville de Paris (2005), and Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2010).

Tiravnija's work has been recognised with numerous prestigious awards including the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Japan and the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist Award, the Hugo Boss Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2004) and the 2010 Absolut Art Award.

Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts at Columbia University, and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. Tiravanija is also President of an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and is part of a collective alternative space called VER located in Bangkok where he maintains his primary residence and studio.