Description
If someone were to ask Chavalit Soemprungsuk about the meaning behind each of the works he had created, the answer would be something along the line of “it doesn’t have any” or the more elaborated comment of “it isn’t the artist’s role to explain the reason or be responsible for the viewers’ understanding.” The name Rest in Progress parodies the artist’s realization and awareness in death in every breath of his life with the belief that an artist’s retirement is equivalent to the departure from this world. As the production process was gradually realized through the collaborations between Soemprungsuk and the creators of the book, two years were spent on collecting over 500 files, the artist’s interviews, and hundreds of pages of his own hand-written essays. Everything is analyzed, compiled, and categorized to tell stories of the many angles of Chavalit Soemprungsuk’s life.