BUDDHAANDZ
Wu Kong F U, 2023
Acrylic on Epoxy Clay, Found Object
14 x 24 x 24 cm
What might a contemporary shrine look like? And what distinguishes the collecting practices of an amulet collector and a Hypebeast? In BUDDHAANDZ’s works, he probes us to consider the issue...
What might a contemporary shrine look like? And what distinguishes the collecting practices of an amulet collector and a Hypebeast? In BUDDHAANDZ’s works, he probes us to consider the issue of sacred materiality and how objects are endowed with ritual significance.
This particular body of work derives from the artist’s Journey to the West series, narrating the adventures of the Monkey King, Sun Wu Kong, from the titular sixteenth-century Chinese novel. BUDDHAANDZ’s sculptures draw out snippets within Wu Kong’s quest to enlightenment: his early rebellion against Heaven which leads to his entrapment by the Buddha under a mountain and the various characters and landscapes that he meets towards his subsequent atonement, here, Sam Jong and the Fire Mountain. The childlike playfulness that has consolidated Wu Kong’s frequent resurgence in contemporary cinema—and subsequent adaptations of the novel—finds new form in the artist’s conflation of this religious icon to the culture of adult toy collectibles.
This reintrepretative act, which the artist calls a kawaii-isation, speaks to his observations of the practices of collecting and worship in his home and in contemporary Thailand, where the worship of objects is not a historical fact but a part of everyday practice. As a child, BUDDHAANDZ was fascinated by his father’s practice of collecting Buddhist amulets. Today he observes the pluralistic entities that house spirits, from trees to anthills, that are frequently prayed to across Thailand. The neon-tinged universe that his sculptures inhabit likewise emerges from a cultural pastiche of the stylistic influence of kitschy Buddhist temple murals in Thailand and his interest in Hypebeast culture.
These motley couplings have to do with BUDDHAANDZ’s central preoccupation with how practices of the past are carried forward for contemporary adaptation, and how his sculptures might participate in a dynamic continuum of worshipping practices where objects become encoded with significance through a network of influences from the past and present.
This particular body of work derives from the artist’s Journey to the West series, narrating the adventures of the Monkey King, Sun Wu Kong, from the titular sixteenth-century Chinese novel. BUDDHAANDZ’s sculptures draw out snippets within Wu Kong’s quest to enlightenment: his early rebellion against Heaven which leads to his entrapment by the Buddha under a mountain and the various characters and landscapes that he meets towards his subsequent atonement, here, Sam Jong and the Fire Mountain. The childlike playfulness that has consolidated Wu Kong’s frequent resurgence in contemporary cinema—and subsequent adaptations of the novel—finds new form in the artist’s conflation of this religious icon to the culture of adult toy collectibles.
This reintrepretative act, which the artist calls a kawaii-isation, speaks to his observations of the practices of collecting and worship in his home and in contemporary Thailand, where the worship of objects is not a historical fact but a part of everyday practice. As a child, BUDDHAANDZ was fascinated by his father’s practice of collecting Buddhist amulets. Today he observes the pluralistic entities that house spirits, from trees to anthills, that are frequently prayed to across Thailand. The neon-tinged universe that his sculptures inhabit likewise emerges from a cultural pastiche of the stylistic influence of kitschy Buddhist temple murals in Thailand and his interest in Hypebeast culture.
These motley couplings have to do with BUDDHAANDZ’s central preoccupation with how practices of the past are carried forward for contemporary adaptation, and how his sculptures might participate in a dynamic continuum of worshipping practices where objects become encoded with significance through a network of influences from the past and present.