Wat Walls: Thitiwat Phromratanapongse with Sarah Siskin

Exhibition catalog for the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture
Foreword by Mike Buhler; introduction by Frank Smigiel

From Frank Smigiel’s introduction:
Located between Buildings B and C, Thitiwat Phromratanapongse’s and Sara Siskin’s Wat Walls painting commission created a new outdoor “corridor gallery” within former loading docks, pedestrian walkways, and the skybridge carriage connecting the buildings. While not a “mural alley” of multiple artists and adjacent projects like the Mission District’s famous Balmy or Clarion Alleys—the former launched as an early 1980s response to political repression and violence in Central America, and the U.S.’s role in those actions; the latter inspired by Balmy a decade later to create an inclusive platform for local artists—this corridor gallery permits an artist to create a singular environment of many parts. For Phromratanapongse and Siskin, the natural elements of the outdoor site sweep through Wat Walls’ formal vocabulary and subject matter: wave-like strokes weave together pattern fields, birds and other fauna in-flight, and key figures in Buddhist and Hindu cosmologies as they hover over the scene.

74 pages
7 x 9 inches