Scream are proud to announce our participation in Scope art fair in New York, 7 - 11 March 2012. The 35,000 square foot pavilion and its dramatic glass box entrance on 57th Street and 12th Ave will host SCOPE’s flagship fair, SCOPE New York, featuring over 50 international galleries and museum-quality programming that will highlight groundbreaking, emerging work in contemporary art and beyond.

Scream will exhibit a solo presentation of gallery artist Pakpoom Silaphan.

Using vintage Coca-cola and Pepsi advertising signs as his canvas, Silaphan creates portraits of influential figures including Pop icons and revered artists who have inspired him such as Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and Frida Khalo amongst others.   These figures populate the signs, making a clear connection between icons and the advertising industry.  Silaphan takes Warhol’s elevation of everyday brands to high art, and combines it with his adoration of famous figures.  The power of advertising and corporate branding is demonstrated by the infiltration of Coca-Cola, Pepsi etc. to countries outside Western culture.  

Silaphan studied Fine Art at Silpakorm University in Thailand, and worked in advertising for a period, before moving to London to continue his studies.  He took a Post-graduate course in print making at Camberwell College of Art, and an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art.  Silaphan has exhibited internationally with shows in the USA, France and Italy, and featured in ‘My Private Collection’ with Grayson Perry, David Hockney, Shephard Fairey and Banksy, at the Paul Smith Gallery in Tokyo in 2009.  He has had three solo shows at the Apart Gallery, and two solo shows at Scream where Emma Love in The Independent described Pakpoom’s work as “a sign of the times”.

These works are not just aesthetically attractive, but intellectually engaging and reflect the artist’s experience of inhabiting two very different cultures, which are linked through iconic figures from popular culture and international logos.  On revisiting Thailand after ten years of studying art in London and rediscovering the signs he collected from rural streets in his youth, he decided to incorporate them into his artistic practice