Udomsak Krisanamis
Thai, born 1966
When Udomsak Krisanamis immigrated to the United States from Thailand in 1991, he developed a unique method of improving his English vocabulary. He took American newspapers and meticulously inked out the words he already knew, making it easier to focus and learn the words he did not know. The visual effect this process left became the basis of the artist's innovative style of collage, which incorporates cuttings from resources such as newspapers and magazines, rice noodles, cellophane, and paint. While these materials meld into an overall repetitive pattern across the surface, closer inspection reveals fragments of images and words. Some of his earliest works, such as Heineken, comprise a layering of textures to create lattice-like compositions that alternate between the celestial and the terrestrial.