The personal conflict haunting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe whilst writing his famous tragedy Faust was the starting point for Att Poomtangon’s installation „The Devil Finds Work for Idle Hands To Do“ (2007). The tragedy tells us about a scientist who was so consumed by his own greed for scientific inventiveness that he made a deal with Satan to exchange his soul for success.

In times where the voracity for success and financial growth seems to replace all ideological values, Poomtangon’s topic stands out for being cutting edge. What the artist finds an expression for is that every action has a consequence, every deal a price. The more Faust advances in his scientist researches, the more the devil gets possession over his soul. While one part is growing, the other one is getting consumed.

Every element in this installation refers to the process of slowly being consumed like wood in the flames of a furnace. During a six month residency in the Städel Academy in Frankfurt, the city where Goethe spent his childhood, the artist gathered nearly 200 pieces of wood, in which he painstakingly carved out the details of the devil’s hoof. Each piece makes reference to a bike trip to the river and back to his studio carrying often only one of these oversized pieces of wood on his shoulder. Whereupon relies the value of an object or action? In the act of salvaging what would normally seem something worthless, lays the proposal to reanalyse the relation people have with their immediate environment, and the importance they give to certain things.

Att Poomtangon, born 1973 in Bangkok, studied Visual Arts at the University Chiangmai in Thailand, and received 2006 the DAAD Award (the Award of the German Academic Exchange Service). The Nassauischer Kunstverein presented his work in a solo show 2008. He will be part of the main exhibition at the Venice Biennial 2009, curated bei Daniel Birnbaum. The Portikus in Frankfurt will grant him a solo show from July 25 until September 13, 2009.