Every day throughout 2004 Kamin Lertchaiprasert meditated, and then made a charcoal drawing. Later he gave each sketch a third dimension by folding a banknote into a palm-sized figurine in contemplation. The 365 results, on view in "Sitting (Money) 2004-2006" at Tadu Contemporary Art in Bangkok, form a diary that's open for all to read and contemplate in turn.

The individual papier-mache pieces are arranged by date in a continuous sequence.

"For a decade I've practised meditation every day," says Kamin, 42. "I also have a collection of Laotian wood carvings of the Lord Buddha in the sitting position. They inspired the charcoal drawings, and then over the following two years I transformed them into sculptures."

The wisdom he discovered through meditation - in response to the problems afflicting him personally and society at large - is inscribed in calligraphy on each figurine. All are cloaked in aphorisms.

One is a seated skeleton etched with the words "Khid picharana sangkhan phuea ploi wang", which means "Considering the body and letting it be". In another, a man holds aloft a collection of items. It says, "Yuedmun thua ku khong ku kor ying thuk" - "The more self-attachment, the more suffering".

Kamin comments on the art world with the figure of man whose head is pushed askew by the sculpted word "art". It's inscribed "Tangjai tham hai pen silpa, loei mai pen silpa" - "Attempting to make art, it becomes artless".

 "To me, art is the process of learning about life and nature. The process of understanding life - that's art. The problem of every man is the cycle of love, lust, anger and fatuousness that repeats over and over again. I've not yet found a way out of that cycle, but I try to control myself as much as possible.

"My mother died when I was a child, and it was a terrible loss," says the Chiang Mai-based artist. "But when I lost my father in my adulthood, there was no tearful grief. That doesn't mean I loved my mother more than my father - it's because I'm learning the nature of life."

Other works on view at Tadu are figures of a woman with two children, representing his wife, 12-year-old daughter and six-year-old son.

"Baan ja nayoo tha phuyoo klom-kliew" ("A House will be a good place to live if the members are united") has a man sitting on top of a house. He's still there in "Khrobkrua pen suan samkhan khong khwam samret" ("Family is an important part of success"), but with wife and children beside him.

"People think I have no serious problems in my married or working lives," Kamin says. "They think I'm a committed Buddhist who should have a smooth life and can manage everything in balance.

"I never say I can attain enlightenment. I just try to use the Buddha's teachings to polish away my negativity. My fundamental nature is raw and forthright, and I may need more time than others to smooth out my harsh points."

Kamin used to be one of Thai art's enfants terribles, loud and sarcastic, but by the mid-'90s he'd replaced the crudeness of footprints alongside his canvases with an interest in the dharma.

He made a large statue of the Buddha called "If You Saw Dharma, You'd See Me" for the 2003 Venice Biennale, but at the same time he was bothered that so few people saw dharma for the utopia it represents. Instead, they revere money. That's where the idea for folding money into meditating figures originated.

The sequential diary approach appeared previously in "Problem-Wisdom" (1993-95) - now owned by the Queensland Art Gallery in Australia. It's a large installation of 366 papier-mache sculptures, each a response to a problem affecting contemporary Thai society.

Every day for a year he clipped one article from a Thai newspaper, mulched the rest of it and fashioned the pulp into a hand-sized "answer" to the reported problem. Over the next year he systematically inscribed an aphorism on each object.

"Sitting (Money)" continues until February 24. Tadu Contemporary Art, on the seventh floor of the Barcelonamotor Building on Tiamruammit Road, off Ratchadapisek Road, is open Monday to Saturday from 9am to 6pm. Call (02) 645 2461 or visit www.tadu.net.

Khetsirin Pholdhampalit

 The Nation