“I love you to the moon and back”
An oft-heard declaration of devotion, “I love you to the moon and back” is a sentiment of astronomical proportions– boundless, steadfast and enduring– most often exchanged between lovers.
But…
"I love you to the moon and never back"
is a variant that can signify one of two things. The first is great passion, a love beyond measure, unfolding at magnitudes that make the distance of 477,710 miles between the earth and the moon a triviality. It’s second meaning spells out the exact opposite:
I can’t go on loving you.

"To the moon and (never) back" is an exhibition that compares the search for love to an expedition to the far-flung lunar frontier, undertaken by a brave astronaut. It is a challenging journey, waylaid by many moods and emotions such as hope, yearning, happiness, fulfilment, anticipation, listlessness, uncertainty and pain.
This exhibition's nine artists, Art Jeeno, Art of Hongtae, Chubbynida, Munins, Peachful, toddyinthemood, Tum Ulit, UnderHatDaddy and Viput A. invite you onboard their spacecraft for a journey to the moon through 238,855 miles of the Great Unknown. Your first steps in the lunar landscape will unveil contents tucked way in the drawer of the past: feelings and memories distilled from the heart that may remind you of a certain someone you once imagined circling for an eternity.

“To the moon and (never) back” is an exhibition that returns us to the orbit of lovers who crashed into the surface of our hearts like a meteorite. That person may still be capering around in the crater, settled-down or burrowed deep beneath the mantle. They might be a spectral presence that has never left your side as the moon follows the earth, or more like a fleeting lunar shadow, a momentary pall that lifts. Maybe they’re someone whose gravitational pull you’ve made fruitless attempts to escape, or perhaps their light burns like the sun, with an intensity that could make you combust into ashes.

Perhaps at the end of this journey of 477,710 miles, a figure restored from memory’s recesses will appear on the horizon to change the tune of your heart…
forever.

Fall under the spell of moonlit love in “To the moon and (never) back”, open 8 June – 23 July 2023 at RCB Photographers’ Gallery 1, 2nd floor of River City Bangkok.