I first met artist Korakrit Arunanondchai at an underground dance party I was invited to by a friend who had been his classmate at RISD. Even in the sweaty sea of cleverly attired art school kids, Korakrit stood out; his long black hair, coke bottle glasses, and dizzying psychedelic t-shirt glowing brightly under the black lights. Certain people wear their artistry on their sleeve, and you can automatically tell that they move to a different rhythm, constructing their worlds according to an inherent aesthetic law that comes to them as naturally as breathing. People like this, with little effort, alchemize plain white rooms into palaces, rags into couture, and blank canvases into new realities. Everything they touch is catalytically turned into art — even their gestures, accents, and footsteps are aesthetically loaded statements. Immediately, from across a pretty dark dance floor, I could gauge that Korakrit is one of those people. And] I was correct.
Later on in the night after being introduced by mutual friends, I learned that Korakrit hails from Thailand, is studying for his MFA at Columbia, and recently did a reinterpretation of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Before we parted ways, he slipped me his website URL, and the next day, as promised, I checked it out. I was blown away by what I found, which was an intricate universe constructed according to a completely singular, and uniform, visual code. In most of the works, neon-colored figures fit together to comprise fractal-like psychedelic landscapes, calling to mind everything from moon craters to neon leafage to flowers. Even though psychedelic art can sometimes be a bit of an eye-roll-inducer, Korakrit’s work is so charged with his own charisma that you can’t help but get drawn in. The works seem as if Korakrit himself was liquified and splattered all over a canvas, or melted down then molded back into a black-lit statue. It’s always an amazing thing when self-expression is so secondary, and Korakrit is particularly skilled at infusing everything he creates with himself — loudly and unmistakably. Korakrit answered some questions for OAKAZINE, and brought out the hidden artist in even his scanner. Interview after the jump. — Text by Marlo Kronberg
