08 June - 08 July 2023

Poster Art Compilation

Vilakone Phachanthavong

15th Anniversary of icat gallery

Poster Art Compilation

Vilakone Phachanthavong

A compilation of poster art from Vilakone Phachanthavong brings together over a decade of funky & free-spirited images & text anchored around art events & exhibitions at i:cat gallery, in Vientiane.

Diverse, multi-layered imagery, blends, melds together reference to music, art, literature, street images, architecture, photography, design, culture, film and a lot more. But art & artist are brought to the forefront; the mood of the artist & the intent tapped into … the signature pulse …

Epic moments in time & place; show-casing poster art

( not art – for art ) at its most illustrious.

Catherine O’Brien

2023

A NOTE ON EXHIBITION POSTERS:

Can’t tell the book by its cover? Conventionally no.

But for the inspired reader, book and cover are inseparable, synonymous, ever after. Or recall Gertrude Stein’s bon mot, “Friendship faded before the flowers of friendship faded”.

Only ever remembering the title of her poem —and long forgotten it was based on a translation — I’ve considered it a wry comment on love, but might also discuss the nature of passing time and of inevitability. Probably also an observation on memory and memory’s accoutrements. Let’s call these latter “art” and ponder the fact of the artefact outliving every palpable raison d’être…

So too the exhibition poster as created by an authentic artist. Initially exhibition poster is akin to the relationship of book and cover. But I’m led to think that the greater its remove from the actual event described or evoked, the more convincingly does it deputise. And more than a surrogate it’s become a thing in itself —that is more fully itself.

Virtually independent of the original —the original commission or permission — the poster is now an event in itself !

Kris Hemensley

for i:cat gallery - 2023