Known for their creative installations which feature toy trucks, bright solid colors and imaginative spaces that reinterpret construction sites as fantastic locales, self-described “art unit” the Japanese duo Paramodel made their Thailand debut with “The Play: Space Drawing” in November. Artists Yasuhiko Hayashi and Yusuke Nakano, began working together in 2001, taking a name that combines the words paradise, paradox and model—three concepts they seek to incorporate into their work—that also plays upon the Japanese word puramoderu, which means toy plastic dioramas. Paramodel plans their projects together, though only one member visits the site to build installations.

Organized by the Japan Foundation and Bangkok’s Thong Lor Art Space, Hayashi spent a month creating the installation in a two-story room with a balcony on the second floor, from which the installation extends into the open space above viewers’ heads. White crosses mark a grid across the floor, and the installation’s skeleton is composed of platforms resting on sawhorses made of blonde wood. Bright blue PVC pipes cover, intersect, and twist away from the platforms, creating unfinished structures that are reminiscent of etch-a-sketch drawings.

Scattered throughout the installation are red and yellow toy cement trucks, truck cranes and tower cranes. These toys have appeared in Paramodel’s previous installations, and serve as a consistent staple in the group’s work, a visual signature that connects ideas of assembly, childhood play and fantasy.

The work creates a sense of childlike wonder through its size and scale. Dwarfed by tall platforms and towers, the viewer is invited to crouch underneath parts of the installation and look up to enjoy its enormity. The use of such a large space allows the immense artwork to demand attention, and the strong solid colors draw attention to Hayashi’s placement of pipes and toys as well as the areas that have been left empty. Though Paramodel’s creation is as still as a deserted toy set, it manages to suggest movement. Toy crane remotes sit out, ready to be used, and the scene feels like a construction site that has been momentarily abandoned. Even the illumination, which emanates from both above and under the platforms, offers the impression of job site lighting deployed at night.

In the show’s opening, Hayashi recounted his memories of growing up in Japan in the 1970s and ’80s during the economic boom. As a result, he grew up surrounded by construction sites, which became a motif Paramodel uses heavily in their work—abstracted scenes formed by toys and plastic elements create lines that suggest unfinished drawings and developments. 

The use of blue PVC makes this installation different from other works by Paramodel—all of their past installations in this style have used white pipes, but in Thailand the only available material was blue. This happy improvisation gives the work strength, adds a unique local detail, and creates a sharp colorful contrast between components of the installation. The bright friendly colors transform a construction site—in our minds perhaps a dirty, dangerous, disarrayed place—into a happy and welcoming environment.

The use of pipes as lines is a recent development for the duo. In past installations, such as The Plastic Model of Paramodel is Paramodel (2012), they used toy train tracks to create patterns and designs on walls and floors, nudging the audience to pay attention to where the tracks terminate. By using pipes as thick as a wrist, Paramodel pulls those lines into three-dimensional space. The pipes’ open ends suggest incompletion; these are unfinished constructions that can be built upon, a nod to the group’s older creations. That’s not to say Paramodel has completely abandoned their old materials—in Thong Lor Art Space’s lobby, tracks decorate the walls in an attractive pattern. The pipes in the exhibition do not follow a similar rhythmic arrangement, with an outward reach that feels spontaneous. Despite this playfulness, the installation feels controlled, held together by the perfectly measured floor grid and level platforms. This paradox, of play and fantasy pegged within an inventively assembled space, is what makes Paramodel’s work so engaging.

Paramodel’s “The Play: Space Drawing” was on view at Thong Lor Art Space, Bangkok, until December 25, 2016.

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