Montien Boonma

This work is in good overall condition as viewed. Any inconsistency is due to the artist's working method and inherent to the work.
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"[Montien Boonma's] works represent different orders of signs and enhance conflicting responses: rural and consumer society, materialistic values and class conflicts; farming community and life urban areas; spiritualism and moral decay...The "rawness" and paradoxes in Montien's oeuvre contains subversive power..."

Apinan Poshyananda, Modern Art in Thailand, Oxford University Press, Singapore, 1992, pg. 216-17.

The late Thai artist Montien Boonma studied in Bangkok, Rome and Paris and has exhibited his works internationally. Though he began his training as a painter, he is better known for his innovative sculptures, which are often modelled by a fusion of organic and industrial materials. The inventive artist wanted his viewers to engage with his work on a sensory and metaphysical level. His works are reflective of his exploration into his Buddhist ideas, Thai cultural milieus, as well as 20^th century art movements such as fluxus and arte povera. The inventive artist wanted his viewers to truly engage with his work on a physical and metaphysical level.

The present lot is an interpretation of a monk’s alms bowl, a motif he often used within his oeuvre. The artist stated, “Hands are the action between hands and teeth. Hands hang on the edge like they hang on the mouth to feed the human.” The indiscernible objects on the rim of the brass bowl were fashioned by squeezing lumps of clay with his bare hands so that they would take the form of his inner fists, and subsequently casting them in bronze. Lined by impressions of casted-human teeth, the work has connotations of the mind, the body and the skull.